A Careless Man's Careful Daughter
by themostrandomfandom
Summary: Mateo Lopez keeps many secrets but none more precious or more dangerous than that of the existence of his daughter, Santana Luisa. Prequel to The Knife Thrower's Daughter. Set between 1879 and 1898.
1. Summer Peach

**Author's Note: This story is a prequel to my Brittana multichapter fic The Knife Thrower's Daughter. It focuses on Santana's life prior to the events of TKTD. It is told from the perspective of her father, Mateo, and is meant to clarify how Santana ended up leaving New York City to join the J.P. Adams & Son Traveling Circus & Menagerie. If I did my job right, reading this story will enhance your understanding of both Santana's character and some of the events in TKTD. While you will see some familiar faces from TKTD in this story, the rising action takes place prior to the time when Santana meets Brittany. It is not a romance but rather a story about a girl and her family—a Santana story. It is a very different project than anything I've written before. I will update regularly on Fridays.**

* * *

_**A Careless Man's Careful Daughter**_

**Part I: Summer Peach**

Seven minutes elapse before the midwife brings the baby into the parlor.

She sets the baby in Mateo's arms and then quickly scuttles back to the suite to care for Bonnie, leaving Mateo and his child alone together for the first time.

The baby is still wet with afterbirth, still bruised in places, still rattled from the delivery. She wails, hurt and surprised. It's difficult business, being born, Mateo supposes. The seams of his heart threaten to unravel as he begins to understand his child.

In the months leading up to this moment, Mateo already loved her in an anticipatory way, but now he loves her anew and better—not just her idea but her reality and presence.

When Mateo heard her first wail come from the suite, he had loved it. When Mateo saw her reflection in the glass parlor doors as the midwife brought her to him, he had loved it, too.

Now her tiny fists and feet flail against his chest.

In her distress, the baby scratches her cheek with one of her brand new fingernails. When Mateo's heart breaks for her tiny pain, he knows: no matter where he goes or what he does with the rest of his life, he will never experience any loves greater than this one.

* * *

Somehow, Mateo had thought that once he had her to himself, the doctor in him would take over—that he would examine his daughter and check her for normalcy and health—but it doesn't.

He doesn't.

He only adores her.

He counts her fingers and toes not to see if any are missing or malformed but to learn each one for itself so that he can love it more perfectly, no matter what it looks like. He carefully thumbs through her thick, black hair, taking care not to touch the soft fontanel atop her skull. He supports her neck. He memorizes her cries. He doesn't try to shush her because he already loves her voice.

Before she arrived, Mateo hadn't really thought of what she might look like.

Right now, she's ruddy, like all newborns are, more pink and dun than anything. She bears little broken lattice bursts of red beneath her skin, at the tip of her nose, and across her cheeks, in places where she ruptured blood vessels, exiting the womb. Her face squishes, and her eyes jam shut. She can't seem to straighten out anything on her for more than a few seconds at a time.

Eventually, she'll take shape. She'll recolor. She'll straighten up. She'll acclimate to having space, to breathing and being and the closeness of other people.

Nine and a half minutes have elapsed since her birth.

She doesn't look much like him or much like Bonnie, Mateo thinks. She is only just herself, and so impossibly small. If anyone has ever had daintier little ears than she does, he wouldn't believe it. Her movements halt and jerk, and she quickly tires of rowing her limbs against the air, trying to swim through this world.

Mateo knows that no matter how his daughter grows, she will become more beautiful to him with every passing minute.

* * *

His baby is sensitive.

When Mateo has difficult days at the hospital and comes home weary and raw, she seems to intuit his mood and struggles in his arms until his care for her overwhelms his worry for himself. Only when Mateo softens does the baby soften, as well. She won't sleep on him until the tension relaxes out of his shoulders.

On one occasion, Mateo arrives at the bachelor cottage after having quarreled with another surgeon at the hospital and lost. He feels thunderously angry and spends a long while recounting his troubles to Bonnie in a furious whisper before taking the baby into the parlor so that he can rock her to sleep.

Though Mateo doesn't say a word once he has the baby with him, she shrieks and writhes in his arms for a full hour until Bonnie finally has enough of it and recommends that Mateo to go take a walk through Gramercy Park so that he might calm his nerves.

I don't need to calm my nerves, Mateo insists. I've talked to you about it. I'm fine. Done is done.

But Bonnie gathers up the baby and shoos Mateo out the door just the same.

Come back when you can manage not to scowl, Bonnie tells her husband not unkindly.

Mateo doesn't return to the house until well after sunset.

When he arrives at the front door, he can still hear the baby screaming.

Feeling much more at peace with himself, he collects the baby from Bonnie so that Bonnie can go upstairs to enjoy a bath. Five minutes after Bonnie quits the parlor, the baby quiets. Five minutes after that, the baby falls soundly to sleep, warm and temperless in Mateo's arms.

The baby breathes milk breaths upon Mateo's neck. She softens, turns to jelly. Though she sometimes snuffles in her dreams, she remains entirely silent otherwise, content because Mateo is content.

It's because she worries about you, Bonnie tells Mateo later.

* * *

Mateo worries about the baby, not because she faces any special dangers, but because he can never guess how very many things there are to protect her from in the world.

One night, Mateo is upstairs bathing the baby in the bathroom sink. He dabs her with warm water, washing under her neck and around the bulb of her belly.

But then a crash.

It comes from the downstairs—from something clattering onto the floor from a height.

Later investigation will reveal that the fallen thing was a framed painting come loose from its hangings on the parlor wall, but for the moment it may as well be a tiny Armageddon.

Bonnie shouts from the bedroom, Is everything all right?

Before she can even finish asking her question, the baby lets out a startled yelp, and Mateo feels the baby's heart leap where he holds the washcloth pressed against her chest. The beat startles through her little breastbone, as hard and quick as an urgent knock upon a door.

Before the baby was born, a falling picture frame never would have bothered Mateo.

Now Mateo wishes he could find some way to wrap his daughter's little heart in cotton and keep it safe from ever bruising.

It's all right, Mateo both soothes his daughter and assures his wife. Papa's here. I've got you.

The next day, Mateo comes home bearing a new tin of nails and a hammer. He spends the evening securing every painting and mirror in the house.

* * *

Mateo and Bonnie don't name her, not for the first three months.

Instead, they call her little endearments—sweeting, angel, precious child, summer peach, little lady—paying no mind to the alternations.

Maybe if there were a birth certificate for them to sign and file with a city clerk, they might feel more motivated to make a final decision. As it is, they are contented to not decide anything and to refer to their daughter by any number of variations on the words perfect baby girl.

Mateo remembers one late night pillow talk they shared before the birth. It concerned what they might call their daughter or their son, whichever they might happen to have.

Bonnie suggested a family name—but not one from her family, who all went by dull things like Percival and Peter, Bernice and Martha. Bonnie said that maybe they could choose a name from Mateo's pedigree. Mateo agreed that a family name might be nice, and especially since a family name might help his mother and father to come around to everything.

To actually act like family.

It's just, he said, our names aren't simple.

Usually, Bonnie might have teased Mateo for hemming and hawing, but that night, she didn't. She set her hand on his hand upon the quilt.

No, no they aren't, she said. But they're still beautiful.

* * *

His own name is a convolution.

Though his parents named him one thing, they've always called him something else, and the sign currently outside his office door reads differently than whatever documentation still exists of him in San Juan.

Of course, he doesn't think of himself by his own name—hardly anyone ever thinks of themselves by their own name in their minds, he doesn't suppose.

Bonnie calls him by his given name but without any accent or inflection to it, an Americanized version of the Spanish. He loves the way his name sounds on her tongue and loves Bonnie for loving parts of him that he must keep secret from the world.

Even so, he also sometimes wonders if nowadays he doesn't really have three names instead of just the two: his Spanish name and his American name, with Bonnie's name for him flagging somewhere in-between.

Maybe someday his baby will have another name for him than even those.

Honestly, Mateo doesn't even know if the baby should have his surname or his alias.

Lopez or Lucas.

Puertorriqueño or American.

Most days, Mateo thinks he loves what he must keep secret about himself more than he loves those parts of himself that he can freely advertise, but sometimes he hears a nasty word thrown at someone else—someone like him but not him—on the street and feels, if only for a second, unspeakably grateful that his secrets are secrets after all, that he can hide, can be concealed.

Guilt always finds him afterwards.

He always feels ashamed to feel ashamed.

In his heart of hearts, he knows that if it had been up to him rather than to his parents whether he would be Mateo or Matthew, he might have never been able to choose.

He doesn't want his little lady to have to have two names or three.

He doesn't want her to have to feel ashamed.

In a way, it resolves his dilemma when he realizes that, unlike him, his daughter will never be able to hide. She won't ever have a choice put to her, no matter how he calls her. Everything that she is, anyone can see on her plainly.

They dedicate her to her one living grandmother, whom she has yet to meet.

They call her Santana Luisa Lopez, and it fits her right away.

* * *

During those first many months, Mateo writes letters upon letters to his parents, inviting them to come meet their granddaughter over supper or on a weekend, but the envelopes always return to him unopened and with nary a word written on them in reply.

Mateo doesn't show the letters to Bonnie because he knows that she often blames herself for things which aren't her fault, including his mother and father's unflinching stubbornness towards her and Mateo's life together.

Rather than trouble Bonnie with a situation that she can do nothing to change, Mateo binds the letters up with twine and hides them away in his desk drawer at his office.

Mateo knows that if only his parents could see Santana, they would love her at once. She is the most charming little infant, amiable and inquisitive. To know her is to love her.

When Mateo thinks of his parents' arrogance, steep anger rises in his chest. His only comfort is the fact that Santana doesn't yet know what she lacks. She has her mama and her papa, and a great, big house and handsome yard to explore. She spends her afternoons with Bonnie in the garden and her evenings with Mateo in the parlor. She has begun to crawl and babble, to cut teeth, and to eat solid food.

Sometimes, when Bonnie is elsewhere in the house and he and Santana find themselves alone together, Mateo speaks to Santana in Spanish so that tongue won't sound strange to her, should she ever have occasion to meet her abuelo and abuela.

* * *

A fire breaks out at the Bellevue late one Saturday night in December. Mateo is not on call when it happens, and, even if he had been, he probably wouldn't have as much as glimpsed the flames or smelled the smoke, being that the blaze occurred in a women and children's pavilion far off from the surgical wards where he performs his usual work.

Four patients perish in the fire, and many other persons, including some of the nurses, suffer from smoke inhalation as the result of it.

The Times runs a report on the incident the day after it happens, and Mateo reads the article aloud to Bonnie over Sunday brunch.

As Mateo goes to leave the bachelor cottage later that evening, Bonnie stops him in the front foyer and wraps her arms around his neck, pulling him into a kiss so deep and purposeful that it nearly sways Mateo from his feet.

For a moment, Mateo allows Bonnie to wash over him like a wave, to catch him up and subsume him, as he hangs from her lips like a drowning man clinging to the one preserver that will keep him afloat. He knows precisely how she means without her having to say it, and he kisses her back, desperately, his hands sliding to hold her at the small of her back until the tide of the kiss shifts, and he lifts her up, up, up off the floor.

In the breathless moment afterward, neither Mateo nor Bonnie speaks; they just run their thumbs along the contours of each other's faces, grateful and sad at once.

Upstairs, Santana gives a wail from her cradle.

Bonnie nods and starts away into the house.

Mateo nods and starts away onto the street.

* * *

Mateo has never regretted his decision to make a life with Bonnie, but he has often regretted that he and Bonnie can only share a life at certain hours of the day, and never more so than after Santana's birth.

Every day, Mateo races from the hospital or his office to catch a five o'clock streetcar. Every day, Mateo can hardly wait to reach his stop, to run home so that he can see his girls.

Doffing his coat and hat in the front foyer somehow seems to take too long. He hates to waste any of his time with either Bonnie or Santana. He can't wait to shower them with kisses, to hold them, to just be home.

After supper, Mateo and Santana have a ritual: while Bonnie clears the table, Mateo takes Santana into the parlor with him, just the two of them, alone. When Santana was a newborn, Mateo would rock her, sometimes in the dark. As Santana grows older and begins to be more alert, Mateo will sometimes stand holding her at the bay window and looking out over the yard, telling her about the flowers, the birds, and the trees.

Santana watches Mateo, agog, whenever he speaks.

She likes your voice because it's deep, Bonnie tells him. It soothes her.

Don't you have such pretty long eyelashes, such pretty eyes? Mateo coos, bouncing Santana on his hip. You're Papa's perfect girl.

Santana reaches up to paw at Mateo's mustache, to put her chubby hands upon Mateo's cheeks.

Eventually, Mateo will bathe her and change her into bedclothes. Sometimes, he and Bonnie will lie down on Bonnie's bed with Santana in-between them, and they'll watch her, smiling.

It always hurts Mateo's heart to hear the clock downstairs chime nine or ten. Sometimes he'll try to ignore it, to stay, but Bonnie will always remind him that he has to go.

What will your neighbors think of you coming home so late?

Hang the neighbors.

You shouldn't talk like that in front of the baby.

Can't I just stay until she's asleep?

As Mateo steps out the door into the night, headed for Gramercy Park, wondering if he'll be able to find a hack to convey him to his apartment, he always feels as though he's left something behind him.

He finds it difficult to sleep in his apartment, in his lonely single bed. He envies other men—Stewart, Fowler, and Wright, his dearest friends and colleagues at the hospital—who spend every evening with their wives and children, taking them for granted.

When Mateo does finally drift off, he dreams of his pretty baby, with her beautiful dark eyes.

* * *

Just a few weeks after Santana's first birthday, Mateo notices it: her resemblance to his mother.

Santana has Bonnie's thick hair and boasts a darker complexion than any relatives from Mateo's side of the family, but those little variations aside, she is all her grandmother. She has Mateo's mother's face and eyes, unmistakably so. Her full lips, her daintiness, and the smallness of her chin—those features all belong to Alma Luisa, a woman Santana has never met, who doesn't want to meet her.

Mateo has learned so much about what it means to love, just in the twelve short months following Santana's birth, but now he learns another lesson: namely, how strange it is that he can love his child so much though she looks so strikingly like someone who has hurt him, and how strange it is that he can do so without feeling any pain at all, just adoration upon pure adoration.

* * *

Bonnie plays the piano for Santana—just little lilting songs, nursery rhymes.

No one ever instructed Bonnie concerning how to play in formal lessons. She taught herself the notes when she was a new bride and had so many lonely hours to spend, cooped up in the bachelor cottage while Mateo was away at dissections.

Now Bonnie sits with her and Mateo's daughter in the long light of early evening, plucking out the notes and singing softly in the baby's ear.

She likes music, Bonnie says.

She does, Mateo agrees, knowing how Santana smiles when he whisper-sings her Spanish lullabies.

Both he and Bonnie smile then—both of them at the baby. It's nice, Mateo thinks, that their daughter should enjoy something that the both of them so enjoy as well. He likes that they have something to share as a family.

Maybe she'll be a pianist, Bonnie muses.

Maybe she'll sing opera, Mateo jokes.

Mateo would love Santana no matter how many or few her accomplishments, of course, but somehow dreaming about all her little maybes makes him happier than he could possibly explain.

* * *

In November, there comes a knock at the door.

It sounds just as Mateo arrives home from his office, when he hasn't even had the chance to step into his dressing slippers or greet his girls just yet. For a second, Mateo can only stare at the door, motionless and stupid, standing in his waistcoat and without a hat.

No one ever comes to the bachelor cottage without an invitation from him. Perhaps it's a solicitor. Mateo has seen a paperboy casing the neighborhood recently.

It couldn't surprise Mateo more when he opens the door to see his mother, Alma Luisa, in a mutton-sleeved jacket and wool felt hat, standing before him on the stoop. She purses her lips so thinly that they would slice anyone who kissed her and holds her hands concealed within a fur muff and very tight to her body.

Nearly four years have passed since Mateo last saw or spoke to her in person.

She doesn't greet him.

Rather, she tells him, in Spanish, Your father is dying.

When Mateo doesn't respond immediately, she elaborates.

You should come home to make your peace.

The recalcitrance Mateo feels whenever he finds himself at odds with someone hardens in his belly. Mateo holds to the door with a fast grip and doesn't shirk from his mother's gaze.

Only if he would like to meet Bonnie and the baby, Mateo says firmly. You have a granddaughter, you know.

Please, Matthew, your father is an old man. He wishes only to see his son before—

David will see the best of me or none of me at all.

I shall send for you for the funeral, then.

I won't attend it without my family. You may send David my love, if he'll have it.

Good evening, Matthew. I am sorry to have bothered you.

Alma has already walked from the front door to the gate by the time Bonnie appears at Mateo's shoulder, Santana perched on her hip and yanking at her hair.

Who was that? Bonnie asks, peering out into the yard, confused that someone would arrive at her home unannounced.

My mother, Mateo admits.

Bonnie knows better than to ask whether or not Mateo invited his mother inside the house. Silent and curious, Bonnie stares out at the yard, searching for traces of Mateo's mother's shadow upon the lawn, but the old woman has already gone, leaving nothing behind her.

By now, the sun has begun setting over the city. The electric streetlamps along the road have started to buzz to life. A chill hangs in the violet firmament.

Strange how Mateo's eyes seem almost to burn.

Without another word, Mateo coaxes his girls back inside the house. He closes the door behind them. He sighs.

All the while, Santana babbles between him and Bonnie, no closer to meeting her grandmother today than she had been yesterday or on any day since birth.

* * *

A telegram arrives for him on the evening of December 11th.

It reads simply: DEATH.

Mateo supposes that it bears all the English that his grieving mother could muster.

As Mateo sits in the living room, clutching Santana to his chest, Bonnie comes to him and sits on the piano bench. She fixes Mateo with a serious look and sets a glass of scotch down for him on the end table.

You could go to the funeral, if you like, she tells him, more pleading than granting permission.

Before Mateo can argue, she makes her case.

You'll hate yourself if you don't say goodbye, Mateo.

I'll hate myself if I do, he protests.

Four years have passed since Mateo last spoke to either his mother or his father, save for the brief exchange he held with his mother last month on the front stoop.

Papa, Santana babbles, stroking Mateo's mustache over his lip, petting it as though it were a little kitten or a rabbit. Papa, Papa, Papa! She grabs Mateo's nose and laughs at her joke. She doesn't realize that anything is sad or difficult or less than simple.

Mateo wants to tell Bonnie that he can't go to the funeral, not without her and Santana there to steel him up. He wants to explain that he can't give in, not after so many years and so many hurtful words passed between himself and his parents. He wants to weep because his father chose to hate his family without ever meeting them. He wants to rage and wrest and crumble from the unfairness of everything.

But Mateo can't very well do any of those things when his daughter has his nose caught between her fingers.

He laughs, and Bonnie laughs, too, and Santana.

At first, the laughter hurts Mateo's chest, but then it breaks like a cloudburst into warmth and light. Mateo chortles from the back of his throat.

Is your papa silly? Bonnie asks Santana.

Papa kishbbbb, Santana says, grabbing Mateo's face between her chubby hands and leaning forward to press her lips sloppily to his.

Mateo loves that when his baby kisses him, she doesn't close her eyes.

* * *

Mateo attends the wake and sits at the front, near the casket, the only family mourner. His mother sits, unacknowledged, near the back of the chapel, blotting her eyes with a handkerchief, unable to understand English or to show the full extent of her grief in public. Mateo hates that his parents still cling so helplessly to their old lies and that his father does so even in death.

When his father's colleagues, all the old pharmacists and chemists, take Mateo's hands and clap him on the back, wishing him condolences and saying what a good man David was, Mateo feels like telling them, You never knew him at all.

Mateo knows that he is a hypocrite, of course.

He tells just as many lies as David ever did, and his wife lives locked away, the lady of the house feigning that she is nothing but a lowly maid, just like Alma did for years in his childhood home. Of all the people who attend David's funeral, only Mateo and Alma know Mateo's given name. To everyone else, Mateo is someone and something other than what he is. No one besides her blood relatives knows that Santana exists at all, let alone her name.

For a moment, Mateo allows himself to wonder if one day Santana will grow to resent him, like he does his parents. Will she hate him for lying about himself? About her? Will she sit at his funeral and wonder if there was ever anything genuine in him or if everything about him were just falsehoods and pretense?

Mateo stops his mother as he sees her about to board a hack back to her dead husband's home.

Come live with me, he begs her in Spanish. Please, Mama, come home. I want Santana to meet you. I named her for you—Santana Luisa. She looks just like you, Mama. I want her to know who you are.

Maybe if Mateo didn't own the deed to his father's home now, his mother would rebuff him, but, as it is, she knows that Mateo has the authority to tell her where she can and cannot sleep tonight. Her only rightful place is where Mateo deems it to be.

If the world knew she were David's widow, she might have some other choice, but the maid goes where the master bids her.

Mateo holds fast to her wrist until she nods her head, agreed.

On the streetcar ride back to the bachelor cottage, Mateo's mother asks him only one question.

Does she understand Spanish?

Claro, Mama, Mateo says. But only just a little.

* * *

At first, Alma doesn't want anything to do with Santana.

She won't speak to or hold the baby even in brief. If Mateo didn't know that Alma had raised a baby once herself, he would almost think that she were afraid of children. She seems so wary whenever Santana is around—like she doesn't want to risk falling in love with Santana by mistake.

Sometimes Mateo thinks he sees Alma looking at Santana out of the corners of her eyes—watching the child with a kind of fearful resentment grained into her features.

Her reticence maddens Mateo even just to glimpse.

Of course, if not wanting to know his child were his mother's only indiscretion in his house, Mateo might be able to bear it.

Unfortunately, Alma also doesn't want to admit that she has moved into the bachelor cottage permanently. She acts like a houseguest, even after Mateo sends for her things from Union Square and furbishes the second upstairs bedroom especially for her.

Several weeks after the funeral, Alma still politely declines all but the barest of meals, refusing to unpack her clothing from its valise, and never daring to use any household objects without asking her son for full permission first.

Though she has a little English, Alma won't speak a word of it to Bonnie. She insists on Spanish only, to Mateo, or silence altogether.

One night, just as Mateo goes to leave the bachelor cottage for his apartment, he finds several folded dollar bills tucked into his shoes in the foyer—payment for a service rendered.

His temper flares. Not wanting to wake Santana asleep upstairs in her crib, Mateo very quietly takes Bonnie into the kitchen with him and tells her that he has made a mistake. He apologizes for bringing his mother into their home. Somehow, Mateo had thought that Alma might be more accepting after his father died. He had thought that grief might change and refine her—that she might learn to love.

I'm sorry, Mateo says, that she looks at you that way.

It's all right, Bonnie tells him.

No, it isn't! This is your home, and you're my wife, the mother of my child! What's more, you're a human being, a person of your own account. How dare she think that she can ignore you or treat you like you're nothing when you're everything in the whole world?

She's only afraid, Bonnie tells him.

Of what? Mateo demands, not of Bonnie but of his mother, upstairs and unable to answer him for herself.

Bonnie shrugs with one shoulder.

That you don't love her anymore? That you'll never forgive her? she offers.

Of course I love her! Mateo shouts, forgetting to mind his voice.

A sharp cry sounds from through the ceiling—his sensitive babe, startled by his volume, in the nursery above the kitchen. Mateo feels a pang through his chest. He had never meant to scare his child or to contend with Bonnie concerning his mother. He curses himself.

Alma brings out every quality that is most unbecoming in him.

Somehow it always comes down to this: Mateo, six years old and standing in the garden, wearing a colander upside-down on his head for a hat, pretending that he is a sea captain, and Alma scolding him that he must come inside and be serious now, telling him again and again that he mustn't give himself over so easily to fantasies.

Back then, it was always, You are not a pirate, Matthew. You are not a soldier. You must come indoors and have your tea and lessons. You must not pretend so much.

Now it is, You are not a husband, Matthew. You are not a father. You must not pretend that what you have here is normal, that you have made yourself a family.

Though Alma has yet to speak those words aloud since moving into the bachelor cottage, Mateo hears them in her every action, in her reluctance to accept this place as a home.

Mateo finds himself halfway up the stairs, ready to serve his mother with his choicest words and news that she will soon find herself living elsewhere, as she is no longer welcome at the bachelor cottage.

Only as Mateo reaches the landing and hears Santana whimpering does he think better of his intentions.

Never mind his mother.

Mateo wants to be with his precious baby girl, to remind her that he loves her more than anything in the world and that he will always choose her first, over everything else. Mateo hurries down the hallway to the nursery, passing by his mother's bedroom door without pause.

It couldn't surprise Mateo more when he enters the nursery to find his mother, Alma Luisa, standing over Santana's crib, dangling her black rosary beads above Santana's face so that Santana can play with them.

Santana has stopped crying now. She stares up, tears still spangling her pretty eyelashes, and reaches for the trinket suspended above her head, unaware of who holds it. Her chubby fingers fumble over the crucifix.

In the split second before she realizes that her son has come inside the room, Alma Luisa regards the baby wearing soft features and a gentle smile that rejuvenates her by years. The arc of her brow, the contours of her cheeks, the vigor in her expression match her granddaughter's features by every whit. She is now what Santana will be fifty-five years into the future.

When Alma hears the door creak, she stiffens, caught. She straightens over the crib.

By the time her eyes meet Mateo's, she has hardened again.

The infant is not baptized, she says in Spanish.

It isn't a question. She pauses for a second, considering. She wets her lips. She speaks again.

But from Saint Anne came Jesus.

Mateo can think of nothing to reply to her, but Alma doesn't seem to mind. Without another word, she begins to jiggle the rosary, catching the baby's eye.

* * *

Alma's attitude doesn't altogether improve right away.

Instead, she warms to the baby gradually, like a cat accustoming itself to new visitors to its home.

At first, Alma will only hold Santana if both Mateo and Bonnie are otherwise unable to do so themselves, like when they set the table for supper or as Bonnie helps Mateo doff his coat when he comes into the foyer from out-of-doors.

It takes two full months before Alma can bring herself to call the child Santana and another month after that before she will refer to Mateo as the child's father and Bonnie as the child's mother.

All the while, Alma still refuses to speak to Bonnie, though her English improves by increments the longer she lives in the house. If ever Alma has something to say to Bonnie, she insists on saying it first to Mateo and making him translate her words.

For her part, Bonnie bears the injustice well.

She is nothing but kind to Alma, and she holds herself to the highest standards of conduct as a housekeeper and hostess. Her already impeccable mothering becomes something not only beyond reproach but utterly praiseworthy in every regard. She is an attentive, lively, and intelligent parent, and under her care, Santana flourishes, acquiring many new words and learning the most endearing little manners.

Of course, Mateo can't help but wonder if Bonnie isn't overexerting herself trying to please someone who will never approve of her.

Though Bonnie tries not to show it, she is oftentimes as sensitive as her and Mateo's daughter. Not only does she dislike doing wrong, but she also dislikes even giving the impression of having done so. It doesn't sit well with her, having someone think so poorly of her, and especially entirely without reason. The longer Alma withholds endorsement from her, the more Bonnie frets for it.

Mateo tells Bonnie again and again that his mother is unduly stubborn, that there is nothing that Bonnie could do to enter his mother's graces.

Bonnie tries to insist that she doesn't mind.

But.

* * *

It surprises Mateo when no one greets him after work.

Usually, Bonnie waits for him at the door, holding Santana's hand in her own. Sometimes his mother joins them, following at a distance. Santana runs all over the house now, and when she sees Mateo in the foyer, she charges at him on tiny legs, throwing her whole body at his knees, shouting Papa! Papa! Papa!

Tonight, Mateo arrives home to no such fanfare.

The house is quiet, the kitchen devoid of cooking smells, everything long and lonely.

Bonnie? he calls to no answer. Mama?

He listens to the house and hears only vast silences. There are no voices echoing anywhere, no footfalls on the floorboards. It is most unusual that a house with a toddler in it could be so quiet, unless the toddler were sleeping.

Maybe she is asleep. Maybe everyone is.

Mateo goes to the bottom of the stairs.

Bonnie, my love? Are you abed? he calls, keeping his voice low enough so as not to wake Santana, if she is asleep, but loud enough that Bonnie, who always listens for her child, could hear him if she were near.

When no one answers him, Mateo stalks into the kitchen to check out the backdoor into the yard, wondering if perhaps Bonnie and Alma have taken Santana outside to play in the garden. When he sees that they haven't, he frowns and quickly mounts the stairs.

As he ascends to the upper storey of the house, Mateo's heart rate increases with each step. Though the logical part of him knows that there is likely a good explanation as to why no one has responded to his calls, he still can't help but feel increasingly anxious.

Horrible images begin to fill his mind: his wife and child hurt, his mother dead.

He starts thinking through his doctor's training. What would he do if he were to happen in upon a gruesome scene? The papers talk about such awful happenings these days, the murders in Manhattan. What if someone found out his secrets? What if someone decided to teach him a lesson for overstepping his bounds? He wouldn't be able to stand it. He couldn't. He begins to hyperventilate—

Bonnie? Mama? Santana? Are you here, my loves? Please answer me!

Then Mateo hears it.

Weeping.

It isn't from his baby.

Mateo enters the nursery to find Bonnie in her rocking chair, cradling Santana against her breast. Though Santana appears worried, chewing her lips and sticking her fingers in her mouth, she isn't the one in tears.

Bonnie presses her face into Santana's hair, crying into so many thick, black curls, stifling her voice. When Mateo enters the room, she doesn't look up. She just sobs and rocks.

She hates me, she keens. She hates me because I stole you away from her.

You didn't—, Mateo tries to insist, but Bonnie won't hear it.

I can only imagine how I'll feel when some young fellow comes to take Santana away from me! she cries. Me, cooped up in this house, having loved Santana and cared for her for so long, and him, just some no one, just some boy I've never met before who thinks he can provide for her better than I can! I'll hate him for taking her from me, I will!

That won't happen, Mateo says, even as he realizes that he cannot promise such a thing.

Bonnie sobs again, kissing Santana's hair.

Mama, Mama, Santana says, unaware of how many hopes and anxieties rest on her, even now.

* * *

Mateo speaks to his mother later that evening, just the two of them together in her bedroom.

You must be kinder to Bonnie, he warns her in Spanish. You must be polite. She is the lady of this house. She is my wife. You will treat her better or—by God—you will not see Santana anymore. I will not permit it. I'll move you into my apartment, and I'll stay here, damn my reputation.

Alma doesn't say anything. She glares at Mateo with sharp bitterness in her eyes, biting her lips into her mouth and holding her hands clasped so tightly in front of her that her knuckles blanch. After a long minute, she gives a single, terse nod.

Mateo isn't certain what his mother just agreed to do—to treat Bonnie better or to move into his apartment?

He decides to give Alma one day to demonstrate that she can change.

* * *

To her credit, Alma does try to improve her behavior.

Unfortunately, she does so in her usual way.

She begins to speak to Bonnie, at first only in Spanish but then later in little snippets of broken English. She limits the topics of her conversation with Bonnie to household concerns.

Tonight, we make meat pies, yes?

Need more soap.

Kitchen dirty. I clean.

Bonnie is a most excellent homemaker, but Alma can always find some way to subtly boss or bully Bonnie concerning household chores. Somehow, the rooms at the bachelor cottage are never clean enough for Alma's liking, the pantry never has the right foods in it for Alma's tastes, and Bonnie cannot manage to perform her various tasks on a schedule of which Alma approves.

Though Bonnie refuses to complain about Alma's constant criticisms to Mateo, he can see how they grate on her all the same.

After spending the first twenty years of his life living under his mother's roof, Mateo knows how it is to never perform well enough at anything to earn his mother's approval, as well as how obnoxious her censure made to sound like helpfulness can be.

The only reason Mateo and Bonnie suffer through his mother's antics is because of how virtuously Alma cares for their child.

Following their frank discussion regarding her behavior, Alma becomes a devoted grandmother, putting Santana down for naps, feeding her mash, and watching over her while Bonnie attends to chores. Alma doesn't speak to Santana much in either Spanish or in English, but Santana babbles to her all the time.

'Buela! 'Buela! 'Buela!

Mateo had never noticed the true extent of his mother's smallness until he saw her holding Santana on her hip. Though Santana is but a little thing herself, she somehow almost dwarfs the old woman.

When she pokes her fingers into Alma's mouth or tugs at Alma's hair bun, Alma bears the abuse unceasingly well, never saying more than No, no—an admonishment she can make in both of her languages at once.

* * *

Mateo makes arrangements through his father's lawyers to sell the house in Union Square. He doesn't tell his mother what he is up to because he does not want to upset her. When the deal goes through, Mateo arranges to place the money into a private bank account—a secret trust fund for Santana. It is a healthy sum, worth many thousands of dollars.

Though David Lopez never gave anything to his granddaughter when he was alive, he has given her something now, a legacy that will support her should she ever become the last Lopez living.

When Mateo tells Bonnie what he has done, she smiles in way that doesn't reach her eyes, her expression somehow tight.

You're a good father, she says. But I'm not sure you're a good son.

Mateo shrugs. I'd rather it be that way, he shrugs.

When he watches Santana playing with a set of wooden building blocks upon the parlor rug, he feels no guilt. He would give anything to provide for her, and his old childhood home was not something so very difficult to part with, to that end.

What are you building, little one? he says, sitting down on the floor beside Santana. May I build with you? What shall we make, you and I?

Santana does not answer him with words, but she does hand him one of her building blocks, setting it clumsily onto his lap. She stares at him with her great, dark eyes, unaware of anything except that her papa is here with her, in this moment.

* * *

Santana isn't an ill-behaved child, but she is a curious one.

She trespasses everywhere—into the cupboards in the kitchen, the pantry, and even the crevice between the sofa couch and the wall. If ever Mateo, Bonnie, or Alma leaves anything where she can reach it, Santana seizes the object for a plaything, whether it is a ball of knitting yarn or a dirty cooking ladle or, in this case, a pipe stuffed full of tobacco powder.

Mateo only leaves the parlor for a moment to help Bonnie reach something on the top shelf in the kitchen, but when he returns, Santana has already wrought her damage.

Black and brown tobacco spores trail from the end table, where Mateo originally left his pipe, to the piano bench, where Santana leans, chewing on the pipe bowl rather than the stem. She holds the pipe upside down, coating it in baby spittle.

Mateo doesn't mean to startle Santana, but he doesn't want her to ingest raw tobacco and make herself ill, either.

Santana! Santana, no! Give that to Papa! he shouts, crossing the room in three long strides.

He holds out his hand and stoops to collect the pipe but doesn't have the chance to do so before Santana startles. Her little body jolts, and she pulls the pipe away from her mouth as though it had burnt her. Tears well in her eyes.

She isn't accustomed to her papa raising his voice at her.

Her little mouth opens wide, and she drops the pipe onto the piano bench. By now, Mateo has memorized her every cry, from hurt to hungry to tired to upset.

She lets out a heartbroken wail, and Mateo's heartstrings fray.

Oh, sweeting, he says, stooping down to gather Santana into his arms.

He picks her up, forgetting her mess, his only care now to soothe her and show her that he meant her no harm, that he still loves her and always will. He kisses the suture in her brow and both of her wet, chubby cheeks.

I just don't want you to make yourself sick, he tells her, using his softest voice. If you eat that, you'll hurt your tummy. It's icky, Santana. We mustn't chew on Papa's pipe.

Papa's pipe, Santana echoes, hiccupping a little as her tears start to quell.

I know it isn't fair, is it? Mateo commiserates. Papa puts the pipe in his mouth all the time, doesn't he? Why oughtn't you to do it, then, hm?

Papa kiss, Santana says, grabbing Mateo's face with both of her hands.

Papa kiss, Mateo agrees, pressing his lips to her temple, glad that Santana is still at an age where she will forgive him of his hypocrisies so very easily.

* * *

Come November, Bonnie falls ill.

Early on, she insists that she is only fatigued—that caring for both Santana and Alma requires such a lot of work, is all—but as the days hasten by, her condition worsens, and rapidly.

Within the week, Bonnie becomes very unwell indeed. Sometimes she will sit on the sofa couch in the parlor to rest a spell when she feels lightheaded, but mostly she refuses to slow down or to immobilize herself whatsoever.

You're very gallant but very foolish, she tells Mateo when he suggests to her that she should remain abed to recuperate her strength. Your mother can hardly keep up with Santana nowadays! She wouldn't be able to manage without me, and you don't make it home from work until after five o'clock every night, so you couldn't help her at all. The house would fall to shambles! None of us would ever get supper.

Bonnie insists that she'll recover soon enough, but Mateo can't help but think that he's never seen Bonnie so wan and frail, not even in the mean hours immediately following Santana's birth.

Every physical activity seems to tax Bonnie now. She coughs when she scoops Santana into her arms. She sweats even doing the simplest chores. At night, she falls into bed asleep before Mateo even leaves the bachelor cottage for his apartment, oftentimes still dressed in her day clothes and atop the quilt on her bed rather than tucked in underneath it.

If things were different, Mateo could take Bonnie to the hospital for an examination.

As it is, he brings home medicines for her—cough suppressants and fever reducers. He tells the landlord at his apartment flat that he shall be away visiting relations outside the city for a few days and then spends the weekend at the bachelor cottage, insisting that Bonnie go to sleep while he both tends to her household responsibilities and administers to her condition.

Despite Mateo's best care, Bonnie soon develops a pain in her belly. A rash spreads out over her navel and breasts, rosy like Christmas against the darkness of her skin. The rash fades to white when Mateo presses on it with his hands. That's a good sign, for now.

Though Santana cries for Bonnie and tries to climb into bed with her, Mateo and Alma always catch her before she gets too far inside the bedroom. They frequently hush Santana and keep her either downstairs or in the nursery so that Bonnie can sleep without interruption.

Mama is sick, Mateo tells his daughter.

You kiss Mama better, Santana suggests.

If only love were such a cure-all as a toddler believed it was.

After another day, the rash ceases to fade, even when Mateo applies pressure to it. It turns darker, and some of it even splits and bleeds. Bonnie's fever soars to one-hundred and six degrees. She becomes delirious.

Part of Mateo had known it before, but now he is certain: Bonnie has contracted the typhus fever spreading around the city.

Over the last few months, Mateo has seen typhus cases at the hospital. Though the Bellevue attempted to deny admittance to any patient infected by the disease in order to prevent an internal epidemic, several contaminated persons did in point of fact find their ways into the wards before obtaining correct diagnoses, and Mateo entered the wards where those patients had kept their beds. Did he bring the typhus home to Bonnie from his workplace unawares?

Guilt pangs him.

Mateo administers Bonnie a purgative, and she vomits within the hour. He bathes her sores and dresses them in gauze. He even brings up the block from the icebox and arranges it under her pillow so as to cool Bonnie's head and protect her brain from the fever.

Alma detains Santana in the nursery, trying to distract her with toys and songs, but Mateo can hear Santana wailing from all the way down the hall.

Mama! I want Mama! 'Buela, Mama!

Her little voice breaks and splits.

I need to see her, Bonnie coughs. I need to see our girl before I—

Only just a few days ago, Bonnie had been up and about, laughing and playing the piano. She has deteriorated so quickly. Every time Mateo treats one of her symptoms, another seems to crop up in its place, hydra-like. Had it happened like this with all the patients at the hospital? What else can Mateo do?

If he were at the Bellevue, surrounded by his colleagues, Mateo could bleed Bonnie of her infected blood. As it is, he can only open the windows to Bonnie's bedroom to let in fresh air and coax her to imbibe brandy in hopes that the alcohol might balance her circulation. He rubs camphor on her chest in an effort to clear her lungs and dabs her brow with a wet cloth.

Please, please, he begs her, all his heart seams unraveling and fraying down to threads.

She loses and regains consciousness at intervals, like a drowning woman bobbing above and beneath the water. Her respiration turns labored. She vomits again when Mateo gives her more brandy, spitting it up like an infant. The rash spreads out over her whole body, except for to the palms of her hands and soles of her feet.

Mateo finds it increasingly difficult to administer to her. His vision clouds with tears. His hands tremble. A pain jabs in him as though it were a knife. He feels it in his chest and belly and core. He can hardly move around the hurt.

It seems like no matter how often he wipes Bonnie's brow, he cannot seem to relieve her perspiration.

There are a million things he wants to say to her still, a million ways he wants to kiss her, a million years he had meant to spend at her side. He had wanted her to know free, honest, unabashed living again sometime in the future. He had wanted Santana to have brothers and sisters. He had wanted to tell Bonnie how glad he was that she asked him to ask her to dance five years ago at that hall in Satan's Circus.

He doesn't even know if she can hear him now.

My angel, he cries, curled against her body in the bed. I'm sorry. Bonnie, I am so sorry.

... market... and sweet potatoes..., she mumbles.

It isn't like how it is in books, having his true love die in his arms.

* * *

At two years old, Santana speaks a smattering of English, Spanish, and baby jabber. She has a tendency to mumble. She scarcely uses articles. Papa, give mine. 'Buela open, por favor. Look at birdie! She doesn't understand pasts and futures, only presents.

Everything with Santana is very simple.

Everything except for this.

She sits on Mateo's lap, facing him, her tiny hands balled in his waistcoat, steadying her as she leans forward to examine his face. Her mouth hangs open as she makes her assessment, her lips parted into a perfect, pouting O. Light from the electric lamp in the corner reflects against the deep darks of her eyes.

Papa crying? she asks, patting at Mateo's chest.

Sí, Santana. Papa is crying.

Mama kiss better.

No, sweeting. She—she—

Mateo gasps and pulls Santana in close to him, holding her over the wound he feels in his chest. His fingers tussle through her hair, and he presses his lips to her head. How can he explain something to his daughter that he can't understand one whit for himself? Words shouldn't have to exist for this. He doesn't know what he can possibly say.

Just.

Papa loves you, Santana. Papa loves you so much. I won't ever leave you. Te promito.

* * *

He supposes that the man who opens the door must either be one of Bonnie's older brothers, Robert or Alfred, or her brother-in-law, whose name he doesn't know.

He has never met any of Bonnie's family members before.

He feels sorry to come to them for the first time bearing such awful, heart-ending news.

Is this the Brown residence? he asks, tipping his hat. I-I'm sorry to arrive unannounced. I'm Mateo Lopez. I'm—

We know who you are, the man interrupts.

He makes no moves to allow Mateo inside the house. Instead, he grips the top of the door with one hand and leans into the frame, the rest of his body slumped into an S-curve somehow equal parts lazy and menacing. He blocks the entryway with his person, and his expression appears hard, though his features are familiar in a way that almost distracts Mateo from the task at hand.

The man must either be Robert or Alfred.

He doesn't introduce himself.

Mateo says, I'm really very sorry, but—would it be all right if I came inside? I have to, um—I ought to—just—

Something jagged snags in Mateo's chest, obstructing his speech. Tears burn at his eyes. He swallows once and then swallows again. God. Bonnie was only nineteen years old, still so young and vibrant. Just a week ago, she had been up and about, laughing and playing the piano. She had always wanted Mateo to meet her family.

The man at the door stares at Mateo for a long time. He draws a deep breath from the bottom of his lungs—something close to a sigh.

My sister is dead, isn't she? he surmises.

Mateo nods, yes.

The man—Robert or Alfred—shudders like someone just splashed his bones with cold water. He draws a whistling breath through his teeth and leans more heavily against the door, his shoulders curling over and his head lowering as seconds pass and the shadows stretch longer over the street. Briefly, Mateo wonders if the man might attack him.

The man doesn't.

Instead, he asks, Where is she?

It's the right question.

She's in our home, for now, Mateo manages. She only just—just passed yesterday. But you see, I haven't a place to—well, my father bought two plots in Green-Wood, one for me and one for him. He was buried last December, and, well, you know how things—

Our people have a place in the Bronx, the man says gruffly. I can make the arrangements.

Before he can stop himself, Mateo asks, Is your father still alive?

No, the man says. He passed just after Bonnie went away.

Mateo nods, the awful jaggedness in his throat suddenly sharper than ever. He can't think of anything else to say except, Bonnie and I have a daughter.

In a way, the new information isn't apropos of anything.

In a way, the new information is apropos of everything.

The man doesn't blink. He doesn't nod.

He says only, You can send Bonnie to us by carriage tomorrow morning.

* * *

Junior surgeons may not excuse themselves from work because their household maids die, which is why Mateo finds himself performing a tracheotomy at the very hour when the Browns have scheduled Bonnie's funeral.

Dr. Lucas, his attending surgeon says, pausing to retract some skin along the edge of the incision. Are you well? You seem gaunt.

Mateo wants to say that the problem is that he doesn't know how to both grieve and parent his daughter at the same time.

Santana keeps asking for Mama, and Mateo doesn't know what to tell her. Santana wants Bonnie to sing to her, to hold her, to kiss her goodnight in her bed. Mateo can't seem to explain gone forever in a way that makes sense to a two year-old child. Whenever Mateo says, Not tomorrow and not the next day and not the next day after that one or the next day after that one, either, Santana simply considers the information for a moment and then says, Next day, Papa.

Ever since Bonnie drew her last breath, Mateo has found it difficult to breathe for himself, let alone to think. He doesn't know if he wants Santana to stop asking about Mama or to never stop asking about Mama ever. Really, Santana doesn't even know enough to feel sad—she only feels confused because she hasn't seen someone she used to see every day for the better part of a week now. It puzzles her that Papa cries so much.

Will she even remember Bonnie one a month from now?

Mateo doesn't have any real memories from before he was three years old, he doesn't think.

His attending surgeon stares at him. If he could, Mateo would take a scalpel to his own heart and cut it out because it hurts, it hurts, it hurts. As it is, he can only manage a queer, stilted shrug, lifting one shoulder as he attempts to smile. He feels like someone is strangling him.

My apologies, he says. I haven't slept well this week. My... bedroom window lets in a chill.

His attending surgeon nods.

Ah, he says, as if that explains everything.

* * *

Mateo doesn't bother to inform his landlord that he will be absent from his apartment over the weekend. He doesn't bother to bring any extra clothing along with him so that he will have something fresh to wear tomorrow and the next day. He doesn't wish Stewart, Fowler, or Wright good evening before leaving the hospital.

He just goes home to the bachelor cottage, to his daughter, and sits with her in the dark, as though she were still a newborn.

Though usually Santana would squirm, unwilling to have her papa cradle her while she was awake and ready to play, tonight she relaxes against his torso, breathing her heavy toddler breaths.

She has always been a sensitive child.

Though she doesn't comprehend what it means that her mother has died, somehow, she seems to understand the significance of this moment, at least.

Somehow, she seems to know that things are different now.

* * *

On Monday, Mateo doesn't go to his office, despite the fact that he is scheduled to excise a node from an important lady's neck at one o'clock in the afternoon.

Instead of showing up to work, he lingers in the parlor at the bachelor cottage, lying on his back upon the sofa couch. He stares up at the ceiling, wondering if he might be able to hear the broken mechanism in the clockwork in his heart if only he listens for it closely enough.

Somehow he can't seem to pick it out over the oppressive silence of the house.

His mother fixes him breakfast and sets it on the end table, but he ignores the offering, allowing the hot smells to first cool and then run stale, meat and eggs congealing on the plate.

Santana toddles into the room around noon, curious to see her father lounging about at the house during regular daytime hours on a weekday. Even at her young age, she knows it isn't the usual way of things. She sets a hand on his kneecap.

Papa sleeping, she mumbles to herself.

He isn't sleeping, of course.

His mother doesn't bother to bring him lunch, but she does call him to supper. When he doesn't heed her summons, he hears her speak to Santana in Spanish.

Your papa is a stubborn boy.

He doesn't have the energy to explain the difference between heartbreak and stubbornness to her.

After supper, Santana enters the parlor again, this time with herMiss Mulock's Fairy Book clutched firmly between her hands. She wants Mateo to read to her, as he so often does during their usual evening convention.

Determined to hear a story, she sets the book on Mateo's stomach and then latches onto Mateo's pant leg, using the fabric as leverage so that she can heave herself onto the couch. She struggles, breathing heavily through her open mouth. It takes all of her strength to grapple her way up, her frilly baby skirt bunching around her waist.

Mateo reaches out automatically to help her, grabbing her under her arms to lift her onto his lap.

Pleased, Santana settles in. Pleased, she retrieves her book, holding it up to Mateo as if he hasn't already noticed it.

Papa read? she asks, shaking the book by its end cover so that the pages fall open in a cascade. She holds the book by one corner, dangling it for Mateo to take into his grasp. I wanna princess. I wanna princesa, she says.

She means that she wants her papa to read her a princess story, of course.

She always, always does.

Mateo accepts the book from his daughter and even forces himself to sit up a bit on the sofa couch, propping his back against the cushions. He thumbs through the book pages until he finds the beginning to a story. He doesn't much pay attention to what story it is. At the same time, Santana readjusts herself on his lap, coming up right against Mateo to have his deep voice close to her ear. She wants to see the illustrations. She wants her papa to hold her up.

Mateo tries to focus on the words.

The, um—The Sleeping Beauty—in the, in the—in the Wood, he stumbles.

His vision blurs. His shoulders wrack.

Santana endures his silent sob as though it were but a hiccup. She doesn't comment on it or shame him for it. Instead, she traces over the page with her tiny finger, finding the image of the princess slumbering in the briar. She waits for a long time for Mateo to resume speaking, as patient as any two year old girl can be.

When Mateo allows nearly a full minute to pass in silence, Santana points haphazardly at the words upon the page.

Princess sleeping, Santana feigns to read. Princess sleeping. She, um, and fairies, and she, um, she go sleep. Pretty princess. Buenas noches, princesa.

Mateo draws a whistling breath, steeling himself. He swallows the jaggedness wedged in his throat.

Did the prince come to rescue her? he asks, pointing to the next illustration.

No prince! Santana shouts, covering the picture of the prince with her palm. No prince!

For the last few weeks, no has been Santana's favorite word, and her answer to almost every question, regardless of what said question might be.

When Mateo laughs a bit at Santana's adamancy, it surprises him, for he hadn't thought he was capable of real laughter anymore.

No prince, he repeats, allowing Santana to turn the page. He presses a kiss to her hair, more grateful than ever just to have her.

* * *

Mateo possesses just one photograph of Bonnie, taken just a few months before he and Bonnie met, when a photographer came to Bonnie's workplace in Satan's Circus and offered to make prints of the staff for one dollar per person.

In the photograph, Bonnie is impossibly young and impossibly serious. In some ways, she looks like the woman she would grow to be. In others, she prefigures herself, an uncertainty to her which is childish and raw.

When Bonnie came to live at the bachelor cottage, Mateo discovered the photograph tucked into the pocket of one of her old pinafores. He asked Bonnie if he could keep it with him at his apartment so that he could have her with him even on nights when they slept apart. She told him he was the silliest person she had ever met. But she gave him the photograph.

Nowadays, he keeps it in a silver clutch in the pocket of his surgeon's bag. He can't decide whether he never wants to stop looking at it or to never look at it again.

* * *

Though at first she was only a nuisance at the bachelor cottage, following Bonnie's death, Alma becomes Santana's only caretaker during the day, as well as the lady of the house at all hours. She assumes responsibility for the countless chores and duties that once belonged to Bonnie, parents her granddaughter, and, perhaps most surprisingly, gives good counsel to her son.

She finds him sitting in Bonnie's bedroom, hunched over on the bed, facing towards the window, looking out at the city rapt in wintering twilight.

It is now Tuesday.

A full week has passed since Bonnie died.

Mateo had been scheduled to assist the Chair of Surgery with a radical splenectomy earlier in the afternoon, but he hadn't bothered to leave the house or even send word to the hospital that he would be absent for the procedure.

Fowler or Stewart probably took his place at the table anyway.

It's no matter, not really.

Mateo clutches Bonnie's photograph in one hand. He thumbs over it again and again.

Alma steps into the room, uninvited. She stands behind Mateo, and he doesn't turn to look at her. He can hear her weight upon the floorboards, though. Santana is asleep in the nursery, across the hall. They'll wake her for supper in an hour or two.

You must return to the hospital tomorrow, to your practice, Alma says.

Mateo's parents had always cared more about him attending medical school and becoming a surgeon than they had anything else, including his own druthers.

Now it doesn't surprise Mateo that his mother would worry more about his work than about anything else.

She wouldn't want him to disgrace her by failing in his profession, after all.

The old recalcitrance hardens in Mateo's belly.

Suddenly, he feels unspeakably angry.

If Alma hadn't pushed Bonnie so hard, Bonnie might never have become susceptible to the fever. If Alma hadn't nagged and hedged and made herself so damned insufferable to have in the house, Bonnie might not have worked herself to death. She might have rested. She might have even had someone to care for her.

Alma always hated Bonnie.

She hated that Mateo wanted Bonnie and Santana and his life at the bachelor cottage more than anything that she and Mateo's father had chosen for him for themselves. She hated that Mateo didn't marry some prim, white debutante who could give her creamy little grandchildren and a sense of belonging in America. She never acknowledged any of Bonnie's virtues—neither Bonnie's playfulness nor Bonnie's deep desires to please and to love. Mateo will be damned if she even met Bonnie's eyes once during the whole time that they lived at the bachelor cottage together!

Alma only ever viewed Bonnie as his hindrance and mistake.

She probably feels hopeful, now that Bonnie has died, that Mateo will marry some other, better girl.

She has no idea that no better girl exists.

If it were up to Alma herself, she would remain forever at the bachelor cottage, keeping Santana Mateo's dark secret from the world, while Mateo repented of his youthful stubbornness and moved on, making a new family for himself elsewhere.

It might please Alma if Mateo never returned to the bachelor cottage again.

She wants him to go to work.

Do not—, Mateo starts to say.

But Alma doesn't listen to him.

You must return to the hospital tomorrow, she says sternly, because your daughter needs you to provide for her. You have a responsibility to care for your child. You may comport yourself however you wish otherwise, but you must attend your work and be a father to her. You cannot keep her if you haven't a profession and a place to live.

Alma pauses, her weight shifting on the floor as she turns to go away. When next she speaks, she does so in the smallest voice that Mateo has ever heard her use.

Santana loves you, Mateo.

It is the first time that Alma has called Mateo by the name she gave to him at birth since he was only one year old, when their family arrived in America.

The sound of the name on her lips jolts Mateo, but by the time he looks up, his mother has already disappeared down the hallway, heading to the kitchen to prepare supper for him and his child.

* * *

The Bellevue board nearly discontinues Mateo's residency.

His landlord threatens him with eviction if he goes missing again.

Stewart, Fowler, and Wright badger him, asking him to where he disappeared and what he could have possibly been thinking.

The Chair of Surgery tells him that he is very disappointed in his failing in character.

Mateo bears all the chastisements as though they were nothing. He promises to improve himself and to never behave so recklessly again. Whatever reparations he must make, he makes.

He cuts down on his office hours for one week in order to take on two extra hospital shifts. He brings in his landlord's milk after the delivery cart stops at their building. He buys his friends a round of drinks at the pub on his own dollar. He performs the most phenomenal emergency appendectomy that the Chair of Surgery has ever seen before an amphitheater crowded with medical students.

He tells no one that his wife has died and doesn't wear mourning attire.

He goes home to his baby girl every night.

Papa's here, he says. Papa's got you.

* * *

Things don't return to normal after Bonnie dies, not after two weeks, not after one month, not after the season changes. The house still wants for laughter. Mateo still feels as if someone had excised some vital part of him by surgery. There are still so many bleak and awful evenings, more lonesome nights than before. The bachelor cottage goes without something unrecoverable.

But gradually things happen.

Christmas comes, and Alma makes pasteles in the oven. At first, Santana is wary of the new spiced smell and strange texture of the dish, but after her papa assures her that the pasteles are delicious, she becomes most enamored of them, and singsongs, 'Buela, more, please! scrabbling her fork against her plate.

On Christmas day, Alma plaits Santana's hair and ties it in pretty velvet ribbons. Santana still looks like Alma in both retrospect and miniature, but she also bears a hint of Bonnie somewhere around her eyes.

She loves the wrappings on her gift more than the gift itself.

Mateo loves watching Santana, but aches to hold Bonnie's hand in his own as he stands in the doorframe, taking in Santana's delight. He hates to think that Bonnie is missing this—Santana spinning in the parlor, the ribbons in her hair trailing the ribbon clasped in her hand. Santana dances circles upon the rug, dimples deep in her cheeks as she laughs through prism light.

Her laughter sounds much like Bonnie's.

She grows up so quickly.

By the time the New Year dawns, Santana has begun to talk so much more than before. She learns to count to five on Mateo's fingers when he holds them up to her. She sings a song about a Puerto Rican frog in Spanish with Alma. When Mateo reads to her at night, she can sit through almost a whole fairytale without squirming very much in his lap. Alma teaches Santana to recite the Hail Mary before bedtime, and, though Santana mumbles through most of it, she seems to know the cadence of the prayer, at least.

Mateo doesn't know how to feel about his daughter praying.

His own religion is science and humanity. Bonnie believed in angels but not especially in God.

Part of Mateo hates the idea of his daughter being made to parrot beliefs before she can possibly examine them logically for herself, but part of him abides the prayers because they harm no one and because they are a routine, and Santana needs a routine now.

* * *

One day, Mateo realizes that Santana hasn't asked him about her mama in a very long while—maybe for several weeks, maybe for several months. At first, he feels a pang in his heart, but then he thinks that maybe Santana's silence on the matter is for the best.

Mateo still isn't ready to talk about Bonnie yet, not to his mother, not to his colleagues, and not even to Santana. His eyes still cloud over with tears whenever he remembers some little thing about her. He feels like he failed her, like hiding her away in the bachelor cottage brought about her death, like he should have been able to cure her fever if he were a better doctor, husband, and man.

He resolves to tell Santana all about Bonnie when she is older.

Time will heal him, he thinks.

Until it does so, he is content not to answer the questions Santana no longer asks.

* * *

Santana contracts a summer head cold and spends her days abed, sniffling and suffering through the meekest little cough. Though Santana isn't very ill, it still loosens the seams of Mateo's heart to see her even slightly miserable, and he does everything he can to recuperate her health.

Papa, fix it! Santana cries, hoarse, taking Mateo's hand and pressing it to her throat, showing him where she hurts.

Mateo wets his handkerchief and wipes her nose with it, careful not to abrade her skin. He rubs Musterole on her chest and opens in the windows in the nursery to let in fresh air for her to breathe. When Santana mewls, he rather unnecessarily checks her heartbeat with his stethoscope, simply because he knows that it comforts and fascinates Santana to see him do it.

There is nothing wrong with her heart.

Two weeks pass before Santana entirely recovers. Once she convalesces, it is as if her illness never happened to her at all, as far as it concerns her.

Mateo finds Santana playing with her porcelain doll on the floor beside her bed, chattering to it, the color back in her cheeks and her voice returned to its full volume. He enters the nursery and sits down beside her, leaning up against the bed frame, crossing his feet and resting his hands in his lap. He grunts with the effort of getting down onto the floor.

Hello, little lady, he smiles. How are you feeling today?

Um, good, Santana answers, distracted with trying to dress her dolly in a frilly new petticoat.

Are you all better? he asks.

It takes Santana minute to reply; her little fingers struggle to pull the petticoat on under the doll's overskirt.

All better, she repeats. Papa, you fixed, um, fixed my, uh, mouth. And my, uh, tummy.

She points to her chest.

You gived me besos, she says.

I did give you kisses—and medicine, Mateo says, in awe at how perfectly simple Santana makes everything. May I have another kiss, sweeting? he asks her, pointing to his chin so that Santana will know where to aim her lips.

Santana doesn't comply with his request right away. Instead, she turns her dolly upside-down so that its skirts and petticoats fall over its head. She holds the doll aloft like a torch or a flower, watching its legs flop back and forth as she moves it. After several seconds, she sets the doll down on the floorboards and nods, scooting over to where Mateo sits and climbing into his lap.

All better, she coos, pressing wet lips against the stubble on his chin.

* * *

It troubles Mateo that Santana has no playmates.

In his heart, he knows that it is his own fault that his little girl has no contact with the outside world, but part of him can't help but blame their neighborhood, their street, their house for her isolation.

Back in 1873, David Lopez spent his fortune to purchase the bachelor cottage, acquiring it immediately after Mateo gained acceptance to the Bellevue Hospital Medical College.

Ostensibly, David made the purchase in order to allow Mateo to live close to the school and to have a place to sequester himself while he went about his studies. However, the real reason David purchased the bachelor cottage, as opposed to one of the apartment flats next door to the Bellevue proper, was because it had always been his ambition to own an expensive American property.

For a Spanish planter's son, land and real estate were the true measure of wealth, and no man could be important unless he owned a fine home with a good yard attached to it.

Though David's own place in Union Square was not itself unimpressive, David wanted his son to live in a home that told anyone who passed by it that the occupant was a Patriot and Successful and a Man of Means.

David wanted the oldest, most American house he could afford, so naturally he purchased a property in a private, well-established neighborhood: an 1844 brownstone at the heart of Gramercy Park.

The brownstone boasted a yard with an English-style garden and a terrace, a solarium on the back porch, servants' quarters, and indoor plumbing, all built in. Its rooms were many and spacious, its embellishments both noteworthy and tasteful.

Inside, the house came mostly furnished, all in fine array. Sunlight poured in through the windows during the afternoons and moonlight in the evenings. Though its moldings originated in faraway places like France, Belgium, and Italy, the fact that so many styles converged within the same four walls marked the bachelor cottage as a uniquely American domicile itself.

The bachelor cottage stood as a monument to David's hard work and perseverance.

It represented everything that he and his wife had sacrificed in order to give their son a better life when they moved away from Puerto Rico. In David's eyes, it was his twenty years spent working as a pharmacist, purchasing a shop, creating a thriving business, saving, and making investments—suffering in silence to hide an unspeakable secret—built from brick and mortar.

On Mateo's twenty-first birthday, David deeded the property to Mateo as a gift and charged Mateo to maintain it well.

While Mateo has always felt grateful to his father for establishing him in such a fine home—and particularly as Mateo might never been able to make a life with Bonnie had he not possessed a property at which to keep her—he does regret that his daughter will grow up with no one but white-haired old millionaires for neighbors.

Santana will never know the same childhood joys Mateo did, playing stickball in the street during the summers, racing home down crowded sidewalks after school. Their neighborhood is devoid of child-sounds. It is quiet and moldering, like a graveyard, and even the leaves falling from the trees take care not to draw attention to themselves as they make their graceful, pirouetting descents.

To the best of Mateo's knowledge, Santana is the only little girl who lives on the block, and less than one-dozen people even knows that she lives there.

Perhaps it is for the best that way.

Of course, Gramercy Park is not entirely prejudiced.

Before the war, the good men of the neighborhood hid fugitives in their cellars and garden sheds; the bachelor cottage may even have once been a way station itself.

Mateo's neighbors claim to like the Negroes and abide Mateo both employing and keeping Negro women on his property entirely without complaint. When they see Alma and Santana through the slats in the garden gate, they smile politely at them and wiggle their fingers in greeting. They are benign, old Yankees who believe that all is well as long as everyone remains in his or her appointed place.

Occasionally, Mateo has heard them call Santana a pretty little pickaninny.

And yet.

For all their purported toleration and magnanimity, Mateo's neighbors in Gramercy Park would never allow their own grandchildren to play with Santana, even if they knew her true paternity. Perhaps especially not even then.

There is no one in Gramercy Park for Santana except for her aged grandmother and busy father.

Thankfully, Santana knows how to entertain herself whenever her caretakers cannot entertain her. She sits quietly with her dolly or tracing over the pages of her fairy book with her fingers. She sings little, lilting songs by her lonesome in the garden and talks to herself for hours inside the nursery. If she feels at all bored, she doesn't express it. If she longs for companionship, she may not know the words to ask for what she craves.

Mateo supposes that, as in so many cases, Santana doesn't understand what it is that she lacks.

He doesn't know whether to feel grateful or sad that his little daughter has already become so self-reliant.

* * *

Santana first learns to memorize.

She is only four years old when Mateo overhears her sitting in the parlor, saying the words to one of her fairy stories aloud. He stands up from the kitchen table and leans against the doorframe, listening to her, hands in his slack pockets. He doesn't announce his presence.

His first clue that Santana isn't really reading is that there are no electric lights on inside the parlor; the whole room is dark, with only a little bit of residual light creeping in from the kitchen. His second clue that Santana isn't really reading is that she holds her book upside-down in her lap, even as she points out the words on the page.

She manages to make her recitation with admirable clarity, even if she does skip over some parts to the story and mumble through the larger words that she hasn't yet the faculty to understand.

When Santana notices Mateo watching her, she smiles and beckons him over to the sofa couch to join her.

Papa, read me the stories? she asks him.

Let us read them together, peach, he suggests.

Mateo starts by turning on the electric lamp and righting the book in Santana's grasp. He sits beside Santana on the sofa couch, wrapping one arm around her tiny shoulders. She stares at him with great, dark eyes, infinitely interested in his every action, and he points to the words on the page. He begins to sound them out phonetically, indicating the letters as he speaks each syllable aloud.

Whenever Mateo's mouth dips open in a long O or his lips pop with an explosive P, Santana giggles and snuggles in tighter against him.

She whispers each word after he does, saying it again and again and again, breaking it into pieces upon her tongue as though it were somehow the sweetest candy.

* * *

Santana learns to read by the end of the year—only simple primers, of course, but still books all the same.

The c-a-t dr-inks milk, she discerns. The d-og ea-ts b-bo-nes.

Mateo feels so proud of her accomplishment that he could almost burst, and he struggles to keep the happy news to himself.

At the hospital, he asks his colleague Stewart, At what age did you youngest child learn to read?

Stewart furrows his brow. At five or six years in age, he says, in school. Why do you ask, Lucas?

Mateo shrugs, biting back his grin. No reason, he says. Only, I have heard tell of a little girl who can read herself books at the age of four years, and she is just a wee thing. I had wondered if she was very clever, then.

Stewart nods. She must be very clever, he allows.

It is most fortunate that Stewart chooses to turn away from Mateo just at that instant, for if he had remained looking at Mateo's face, Mateo never would have been able to keep any secrets; Stewart would have seen the truth about everything in the brilliance of his smile.

* * *

How strange it is that as Santana grows, she becomes more and more like a person whom Mateo feels certain that she can scarcely remember.

Though Santana still mostly resembles Alma, she also bears hints of Bonnie just around her eyes and at the corners of her mouth, and certain of her expressions almost seem to bring her mother back to life.

Most often, Santana recalls Bonnie in moments of somberness and stern attention—when she bites her lip and furrows her brow, when she pouts, and when her face sets in consternation, confusion, or deep consideration.

She is such a serious little child, not mirthless by any means but also entirely more considerate than Mateo himself had ever been at her age.

One might suppose that it would pain Mateo to live with such a constant reminder of his lost love, to see traces of Bonnie without ever being able to enjoy her company again, but, somehow, it gladdens him down to his bones to know that Santana bears her mother with her wherever she goes, in her glances, in her queries, in her times of deepest thoughtfulness.

He loves that Santana is his and Bonnie's forever.

He also loves that Santana's likeness to Bonnie is so much more than just superficial.

It delights Mateo to find that Santana shares Bonnie's eagerness to please, her cleverness, her wit, and her desire to never do wrong, if she can help it.

It further delights him that Santana sometimes has a way of speaking that is like how Bonnie used to do so, for she places stress onto the same words as Bonnie would have done. Even the timbre of Santana's singing voice is like Bonnie's, though at a higher pitch and with less years in it.

It surprises Mateo that so much of Bonnie has passed to Santana, even without Bonnie present to pass it on in person.

One afternoon, Mateo finds Santana sitting at the piano bench, plinking on the keys. Light pours into the parlor through the bay window. It catches in Santana's hair, still wet from a recent bath, spangling her curls. Santana hardens her face in concentration.

She is Bonnie, teaching herself to play.

When she looks up at Mateo observing her from across the room, Santana offers him a serious sort of smile—another one of Bonnie's expressions, brought back from the dead.

Don't be sad, Papa, she tells him.

I'm not sad, Mateo says. I am happy because you are growing up to be such a fine young woman.

A giddier smile creeps onto Santana's face. It isn't Bonnie's, but it is beautiful.

Let me play you a song, Papa.

Please, peach, please. Anything you want to play.

* * *

Alma begins to pester Mateo to socialize.

A young man of your age, she tells him in Spanish, should not spend his every evening with an old woman and an infant. You should be making new acquaintances, recreating.

What she really means is that she would like Mateo to remarry, and he knows it. The implication in her statement stirs up the old recalcitrance in him—and also brings out an ache in his heart, still fresh after two and a half years.

Santana is no longer an infant, Mateo retorts in English. She is nearly five years in age. And I have many acquaintances at the hospital. I needn't go out anywhere. I'm not a schoolboy who must attend balls and luncheons in order to live well.

But then Fowler and Stewart approach Mateo one afternoon following a lecture.

They tell Mateo that they have joined a new but very distinguished gentleman's club, and that they find their membership in the club most invigorating. They concede that Mateo may not need such a diversion in his life as they do in theirs, considering that he is still a bachelor and able to do as he pleases, while they both have wives, numerous children, and countless responsibilities between them.

However, they say, we would still like you to consider attending the club, Matty.

They've already spoken with Wright, who has promised to come along to a meeting if his wife doesn't henpeck him to death for doing it.

Mateo consents to try out the club and shows up to a meeting on the same night that Wright does.

He knows that his mother would be most disappointed that he has chosen to take his diversions at a place where there will be no opportunities for him to interact with eligible ladies.

That knowledge alone entices Mateo to act both quickly and rashly.

By the end of the night, he has become a novice member of the New York Grolier Club.

In making his first introduction to them, Mateo is most pleased to learn that the Groliers are actually a bibliographic society and boast a vast library, named after a former Treasurer-General of France. Though he has not always felt fond of his school studies, Mateo has always loved books and reading for his own personal edification and leisure. Having unlimited access to the Grolier resources agrees with him very much.

During his first few trial weeks of membership in the Grolier Club, Mateo's colleagues at the hospital remark that he has begun to look very well indeed. They tell him he has color in his cheeks again.

One of the senior surgeons even compliments Mateo as they perform a ligature of the aortic artery together, saying that he has never observed a junior resident possessed of as much focus and precision as is the fine, young Dr. Lucas.

Whatever regimen you have created for yourself, keep at it, boy, he advises.

I have every intention to, sir, Mateo tells him honestly.

It gratifies Mateo to engage with other adults besides his mother. In a way, he feels like a man, once starving, invited to a vast feast and granted permission to eat his fill. The conversation at the Grolier Club meetings stimulates and invigorates his mind. His companionship with the other grown persons there helps him to remember parts of himself that had corroded and cobwebbed in the years since Bonnie's death.

Even so, Mateo cannot help but feel somewhat guilty for enjoying his time spent away from Santana.

Is he a terrible father for not wanting to dedicate his every free hour to living with her inside the bachelor cottage? Is it awful of him to keep her locked up when he himself may go about the city, at his liberty? Oughtn't he to keep her company whenever he is able to?

Mateo finds he must remind himself that it is healthful for him to take in some personal relaxation.

After all, even Bonnie had needed her half-hour or hour of respite every night, and she had been the most attentive and eager parent Mateo has ever known.

Mateo must care for himself in order to care for Santana, mustn't he?

The club seems to do him good, both personally and professionally.

After great deliberation, Mateo determines to maintain his membership and submits a full pledge to the organization, much to the delight of Fowler, Wright, and Stewart.

Though Mateo does still harbor some guilt on club nights, he also immensely enjoys his conversations with the other Grolier men, most of whom are doctors, bankers, and captains of industry, brilliant in their own fields and highly amiable.

The men spend their meetings discussing art and literature. While some are churchgoers, many of them are secular humanists, like Mateo. They find God in paintings and sculpture. They learn the secrets of the universe in books and scientific treatises.

When the opportunity allows, they engage in philanthropic pursuits, donating books to worthy causes and hosting symposia for the public.

They often end their nights drinking and playing billiards, though they are by no means a rowdy group or poorly comported in the least.

On nights when Mateo must attend meetings rather than go straight home to see Santana after work, he makes sure to bring books to her as a treat afterwards. Though the Groliers haven't much in the way of a children's collection, they do own numerous classic tomes and even many newer volumes. Mateo gives Santana the book list for the library and allows her to choose her own titles, as long as he deems them appropriate for a child of her age.

Though Santana can read quite fluently by the time she is five years in age, she still enjoys it when Mateo reads aloud to her in his spare moments, and she often asks him to explain to her unfamiliar ideas and allusions from her books.

Surprisingly, she seems to have the most questions on those rare occasions when Mateo can bring her a children's book.

She doesn't think about her world in the way that other little children do.

She is such a serious little thing.

Papa, she says one day, pouring over her reader. Where is Africa?

Far away, little lady, Mateo answers. I can bring you a map tomorrow to show you where it is.

I should like that, Santana says.

You should? Mateo teases, smiling at his daughter's gravity.

She either ignores the teasing or doesn't notice it.

Yes, she says, turning her attention back to the open book in her lap, studying the pages. I should like to see where Africa is, for Mr. Parley says that that is where the largest elephants come from.

* * *

Santana can neither attend school nor take private lessons with a tutor at the bachelor cottage for more reasons than Mateo can count.

For one thing, Santana possesses no birth certificate or proof of American citizenship. For another thing, there are no Negro schools near Gramercy Park.

To make the matter even more complicated, Mateo doesn't trust that a governess or lecturer would keep his family secrets, even for handsome pay.

It would seem too unusual for a bachelor surgeon to hire someone to educate his maid's young granddaughter, and admitting his own paternity is a risk that Mateo cannot take, both for Santana's own safety and the sake of his livelihood.

All the same, Mateo will not suffer Santana to grow up uneducated.

He decides to become her schoolmaster himself.

Before supper, Mateo and Santana study mathematics, music, and sciences. After supper, they read, write, spell, and discuss geography and history.

On nights when Mateo must be away from the bachelor cottage, he assigns Santana lessons and has her read without him. If she shows an especial interest in any particular topic, he will try to find relevant literature for her to peruse concerning it. It is Mateo's belief that knowledge is one of the glories of humanity. He wants his daughter to enjoy every opportunity to enrich her understanding, never mind the fact that the whole world might try to deny her this right, were they given a say in her development.

To Mateo's delight, Santana turns out to be a very clever student.

She encounters difficulty with only just one subject.

Writing.

Mateo brings home a slate and chalk so that Santana can practice writing. She has already been able to recognize the letters of the alphabet for nearly a year and a half. Mateo expects that Santana will not have any trouble learning to mimic the characters she already knows from the page for herself on her tablet.

But then Santana can't seem to press down hard enough with the chalk to leave a mark against her slate.

And then the slate keeps turning on the table, slipping out from under Santana as she struggles to make out an inscription upon it.

When Santana does manage to leave marks, they are illegible and uncoordinated, one on top of the other. Her little hand trembles as she drags the chalk along dusty black. Her wrist moves at odd angles and in such a way that Mateo cannot even think as to how to correct the mistake.

Though Mateo encourages Santana, it doesn't take long for her to become frustrated.

Papa, don't make me do it! she cries, tears curling down her cheeks as she pushes her slate away from her. I don't wanna write! I don't wanna! It's too hard!

It had been so long since Santana had thrown a tantrum that Mateo doesn't know precisely how to respond.

He ends up permitting her to go to bed without first making her complete her lessons.

She hasn't written a single ABC upon her tablet.

Mateo can hear Santana sobbing upstairs in the bathtub, even as he remains downstairs in the parlor, cleaning her school supplies from her writing desk. He picks up the slate and holds it between his hands, thumbing away chalk dust.

Though Mateo loves to learn, his own memories of his schooldays are not all kind ones. He never struggled to master any skill or subject in school intellectually, but he did sometimes find it difficult to concentrate on his tasks. From time to time, he would shirk his work and play the scallywag during class.

He remembers one occasion on which his schoolmaster rapped his knuckles with a baton after he failed to decline his Latin. He held his tears until he made it halfway home for the evening. When Alma opened the door to find him weeping, he lied to her and said that he had bruised his hand in a scuffle on the schoolyard, for he couldn't bear to tell his mother that he had failed to complete his lesson. The thought that he had might have disappointed her and his father caused his whole heart to ache.

Mateo waits until Santana finishes her bath and Alma combs out the kinks in her hair, drying it with a towel and braiding it for the night. He lingers at the bachelor cottage later than he would normally.

Santana, sweet peach, would you like me to read you a story? he asks, appearing at the doorway to the nursery.

Santana sniffles and nods. She reaches over to her nightstand, procuring a book for him from out of a tall stack.

As Mateo takes a seat at the edge of her bed, he feels his heartstrings picked apart, as if with a seam ripper.

I'm very proud of you, he says, leaning down to kiss Santana on the brow. I always am.

Though Santana still sniffles, she also manages a smile.

* * *

They're at the supper table the next night when Mateo notices it.

He asks Santana to pass him the salt, and she sets down her fork, reaches across the table, lifts the shaker, and submits it into Mateo's grasp, all with her left hand.

Mateo continues to watch Santana throughout the meal.

Her right hand remains daintily in her lap under the table, while her left hand moves quickly and adroitly about, manipulating food, drink, and utensils with the greatest of ease. After the meal, she clears her plate to the sink and stands on her little footstool, propping her plate up in the basin with her right hand and scrubbing the porcelain clean with the washcloth in her left.

Mateo doesn't understand how he had never noticed it before. He thought he knew everything there was to know about his little girl. Has she been keeping secrets from him? She has always been so clever.

Once Santana completes her task, Mateo calls out to her, grinning.

Let's go practice your handwriting, shall we?

For a split instant, Santana looks frightened, not just to fail but to fail her papa, in particular. She glances from Mateo to the floorboards and back again, wringing her little hands together in front of her pinafore. Though she is far too timid to refuse Mateo anything he asks of her outright, she seems unable to make herself to go join him.

Mateo's heart seams loosen.

Come, come, he beckons. I have worked it all out. I know how to help you. Yesterday, your teacher had made a mistake. Today, he knows better. Won't you give him another chance, precious girl?

Santana bites her bottom lip, still wary, but then a smile starts to curl at her mouth. Soon, dimples deepen in her cheeks. She doesn't speak but nods in reply, extending a hand to Mateo so that he can lead her to her writing desk.

She trusts him so fully and implicitly that it almost startles him to contemplate it.

She is willing to follow her papa anywhere, willing to believe that he can do everything in the world to help her as she has need of it.

* * *

It isn't an instant fix.

Teaching Santana to write with her dominant hand requires more effort than simply setting chalk in her grasp and encouraging her to have at it.

Before today, Mateo had never considered the mechanics of left-handed writing in much depth at all. Working out how to angle the slate so that Santana won't drag her hand or even elbow through her writing requires trials and corrections on Mateo's part. Determining a way for Santana to hold the chalk without straining her little wrist requires even more trails and corrections on hers.

Gradually, father and daughter develop a method in which Mateo supports Santana's hand with his own as she makes her strokes upon the slate. Mateo helps her to press down hard enough to leave marks and guides her in the unfamiliar motions, A... B... C.

Santana wears her most somber expression all throughout the lesson, mouth tight and brow furrowed in concentration. Her wrist is weak and unaccustomed to performing such meticulous work.

When she completes her first set of letters, she frowns at the outcome, disappointed to see them so small upon the vast, black slate.

They're too tiny, she complains. And shaky.

But you've improved so much since yesterday, Mateo notes. Imagine how much you will improve again tomorrow.

It takes a long while before Santana feels enough at ease to practice writing without Mateo holding onto her hand. It takes another long while after that for her to learn to shape her letters.

At first, Santana writes very sloppily, to the point where she feels ashamed of her hand. When Mateo checks over her work, she hunkers low in her chair and apologizes before he can even open his mouth to speak.

I'm sorry, Papa. I can do better.

Though Mateo does encourage Santana to practice, he never has it in him to scold her. When he sees practicing her penmanship rather than playing with her dolly before bedtime, he wonders if his heart seams won't unravel from sheer adoration. Has there ever been such a diligent little girl, so devoted and good?

It takes a long while for Santana to improve her handwriting to the point where it becomes not just legible but expressive. She traces over old letters she finds stashed in Mateo's desk, biting her tongue between her teeth and paying painstaking attention to every jot and tittle. Eventually, she begins to produce not just print but script.

She shows it to her papa.

Is it all right? she asks, nervous and unable to meet Mateo's eyes.

In all honesty, her writing looks not unlike Mateo's own, but it is also somehow more graceful, more careful and refined.

Mateo takes Santana's stationary into his hands.

It's beautiful, he tells her. Absolutely perfect.

* * *

**Spanish translations:**

_**abuelo : grandfather**_

_**abuelo : grandmother**_

_**Claro : Of course**_

_**por favor : please**_

_**Sí : Yes**_

_**Te promito : I promise you**_

_**Buenas noches, princesa : Goodnight, princess**_

_**pasteles : a traditional Puerto Rican Christmas food, similar to a Mexican tamale, usually made from plantain or sweet potato paste, meats, and spices, and rolled in a banana leaf. In New York, Alma must modify the recipe because she does not have all the traditional ingredients available to her.**_


	2. Little Lady

**Part II: Little Lady**

Gradually, they rearrange the bachelor cottage.

Santana outgrows the nursery, so they move her down the hall to the bedroom at the top of the stairs. A few months later, Alma relocates to Bonnie's old master bedroom, attracted by the west-facing window and the promise of more closet space and a very comfortable bed. Her old bedroom becomes Mateo's study, the nursery a place for the guests who never visit the house or for Mateo on the rare occasions when he chooses to spend the night.

Mateo repaints the parlor and makes improvements to the bathroom piping. He also hires a weathered, old Irishman named Aloysius Bradley to help with the upkeep of the yard year-round in lieu of bringing on a new gardening crew come every change in weather and season.

Bradley moves into the old shed on the back corner of the property, which he and Mateo convert into a rather handsome gardener's quarters. Mateo likes the idea of there being a man about the house during the day, just in case Alma and Santana should ever have need of him.

Thankfully, Bradley is deferent and unassuming enough not to ask questions corning Mateo's family life. If he wonders about the relation between Mateo and his maid and the little girl who lives in the house, he daren't as much as mention it. He calls Alma ma'am and Santana lass and mostly just tends to the flowers, lawn, and fixtures of the house, as he ought to.

If there is one thing that Mateo can feel sure about as a father, it is that he has provided his daughter with the finest home possible in which to grow up.

* * *

Mateo lives not just two lives, but three.

In addition to being the devoted father and reluctant son who spends his evenings at the bachelor cottage and the resident surgeon on service at the Bellevue Medical College Hospital, he also maintains a third occupation, treating certain unlikely patients at his private office on East 32nd Street and Madison Avenue.

Mateo began his under-the-table practice in medical school, first treating friends and then friends-of-friends. Now anyone who knows someone can get a referral to his backdoor. He can never acknowledge his dealings with the nonwhite population of New York to anyone in authority lest he lose his medical license, and perhaps that fact is part of what makes this portion of his work so immensely gratifying—because it is something that he does for its own sake.

At the hospital, Mateo finds himself in constant competition. While he considers Stewart, Fowler, and Wright dear friends, almost like brothers, they are also his rivals, jockeying and vying with him to impress the senior faculty and secure the most accolades and highest level of professional recognition within the department.

At the office, Mateo competes with no one, and especially when he takes his secret cases. Most of the time, he collects only the cost of supplies from his patients and sometimes not even that. Seldom can they cover his fees, so seldom does he bill them.

They come to him with broken bones, infected lungs, aching teeth, and rebellious innards. Other city doctors won't see their kind, and their own midwives and healers can only do so much on their behalves. Sometimes, Mateo's is the first medical office they have ever visited. They thank him for his work with foodstuffs and handshakes.

He wishes he could explain to them how much his work edifies his life—how very much he enjoys this kind of honest, mud-soaked medicine.

A little girl sits on the examination table, and Mateo holds her arm at the wrist and at the elbow between his hands. The child is beautiful, darker than Bonnie and only just a few years older than Santana. She has suffered from a dislocation falling from a retaining wall down onto the sidewalk while racing with her playmates.

This will hurt, Mateo warns her. It is all right if you must cry a little.

Without waiting for her reply, Mateo rotates her arm with a single brusque twist, hearing a pop as her ligament fits back into its rightful place.

The little girl gives a yelp, and her mother grabs onto her more tightly, but though the little girl's eyes fill with reactive tears, she doesn't permit them to fall. Really, she seems more surprised by the hurt than anything.

You are very brave, Mateo commends her, feeling along her bone to make sure that he has done his work properly.

Thank you, Doctor, the girl's mother says. Thank you for seeing her. They turned us away at the hospital, and I wasn't sure if it was broken. If Othniel hadn't told us about you, I don't know what we would have done. You do the Lord's work.

Mateo feels a blush rise to his cheeks. He reaches for the girl's coat, handing it over to her from where it rested upon a stool.

No, no, he demurs. I only treat other people's children how I would hope another doctor might see fit to treat to my own child.

* * *

Normally, Mateo wouldn't dare to tell any of his colleagues from the hospital about the secret work he performs at his office during after-hours.

But nurses are not really the same as colleagues.

And this circumstance isn't especially normal.

Mateo trots down the Bellevue stairs toward 26th Street, eager to catch his streetcar so that he can rush home to Santana. Tonight, he wants to teach her a new trick for multiplying large numbers. He already has the lesson organized in his mind.

But then he spots it from the corner of his eye: one of the nurses from the surgical ward meeting her family on the sidewalk, two little girls and their aged Negro nanny.

The nanny walks with a terrible limp and leans upon a cane. At a second glance, Mateo sees that she wears heavy bandages upon her foot, even on the outside of her shoe. It is clear that she has brought the children a long way to meet their mother after a shift at the hospital and also that she is greatly afflicted.

Something gives a sharp tug on Mateo's heart seams, threatening to pull them loose.

Before he can think better of it, he hurries over to where the nurse crouches, wrapping her children's jackets more tightly around them against the autumn wind. He knows her from their shared work. She has been a part of the surgical staff perhaps longer than he has.

Pardon me, Nurse? he says, stopping a safe distance from her, so as not to give her a start.

She looks up at him, curious that a surgeon would speak to her outside the hospital. She wears wariness in her eyes, as do her oldest child and the nanny. Her baby just stares, uncomprehending.

Mateo gestures to the nanny.

I can see that your employee is in pain. I think I might be able to help her, he says.

And just as simply as that, Mateo has transgressed the heretofore impenetrable boundary that had existed between his work at the hospital and his private practice.

He arranges for the nurse to bring the nanny into his office on Thursday afternoon and tells her that she will assist him in the procedure to remove the nanny's bunion. It is a relatively uncomplicated surgery—one that Mateo can perform easily in his office, using only the most minimal anesthesia.

All in all, it takes him and the nurse less than two hours to complete their task. After numbing the nanny with localized morphine, Mateo makes an incision at the side of her foot and repairs the deformed joint and bones, moving them back into place, shaving off the excess, and pinning everything back into place with a steel needle. He then stitches the incision closed, bandages the wound, and immobilizes the foot with a plaster of Paris cast.

It is only after the nanny has successfully undergone the surgery and sits recuperating from the procedure in Mateo's office, waiting for her cast to dry, that the nurse pulls Mateo into the hall and vigorously shakes his hand, thanking him.

Matilda is like family to me, she explains, almost tearful. She was my nanny when I was a girl, and now she is the nanny to my children. My husband died last year, and I don't know what I would do without her. I wanted her to have surgery, but I didn't think anyone would ever consent to do it. It's just awful, the way she can't come inside the hospital, the way her kind is just—is just—turned away. You have saved her, Dr. Lucas. What can I ever do to repay your generosity?

Mateo shakes his head and chuckles.

It is nothing, he says politely. My pleasure, Nurse. Working on Matilda has given me the opportunity to practice my technique, you see.

He pauses, chewing over a thought. Perhaps it will be vulgar to ask such a question, but he cannot help himself.

Tell me, can you afford to buy her better shoes?

I—I cannot.

Then have this—

Oh no, I couldn't!

No, no, I insist. Ten dollars is not so much to a surgeon. Take it and buy her fine leather shoes. She is your family. She needs them.

Tears spangle the nurse's eyes, catching under the electric lights.

Are you certain there is nothing I can do to repay you? she asks.

Again, Mateo shakes his head.

You can only make sure that what we have done here today remains a secret. Please don't mention it to anyone at the hospital.

Of course, I won't, I won't—though it is such a pity that no one must ever know what kind of man you truly are.

Mateo either winces or smiles.

Sometimes I think it is best that way.

I suppose you are right, Doctor.

* * *

On a sunny Saturday, Santana approaches Mateo, tiptoeing over to where he sits smoking his pipe and reading the weekend newspaper. She wears her most somber expression, her brow furrowed and her lips taut, and folds her little hands daintily upon the chair arm. She waits to speak until Mateo presents her with his full attention, setting the newspaper down in his lap and removing his pipe from between his lips.

Is something the matter, peach? he asks her.

Papa, Santana says, as serious as ever. Did my mother live in the bachelor cottage with Abuela and me, or did she live with you at your apartment?

It is the first question that Santana has asked about Bonnie in years.

To say that Santana's query takes Mateo aback would be to say almost nothing as to its true effect upon him. Something tugs, sharp, upon his heart seams. The answer more falls from his lips than flies from them of its own accord.

Why, she lived here with you, he replies.

Santana nods, mulling over this new information, as solemn as a little girl could possibly be.

That means that this house is for the women, she surmises, as though she has just resolved some very pressing issue for herself. Thank you, Papa.

Santana asks no further questions about her mother—not for how long she lived in the bachelor cottage or what she did during her days and nights or about the color of her eyes or the sound of her laughter or anything that might reveal something important about her. Santana's whole approach is clinical and detached, the same as when she asks Mateo questions about the trivia she reads in books.

Contented with what she has learned, she gives Mateo a pat on the arm.

She neither smiles nor frowns as she goes away.

* * *

Santana adores her grandmother, quietly and through fervent observation.

When Alma cooks supper, Santana stands on a little footstool at her side, peering into her bowls and dishes, watching the way she contracts and relaxes her hands, kneading bread dough, mixing ingredients, and rubbing spices into meats.

Santana never speaks a word aloud unless Alma speaks to her first. She is silent, with an attendance that borders on devotion. If ever Alma asks her to pass the cinnamon or fetch a washcloth, she bites her lip, nervous, but something also lights behind her eyes.

She wants so much to prove useful to the person she so highly esteems.

She would hate to make any mistakes.

One day, Alma is out in the yard, tending the rosebushes, when Mateo arrives home from work. Alma tells Mateo that she left Santana inside the house to play for the time being and that supper will be ready within the hour.

When Mateo goes inside the house, he calls for Santana but hears no answer. Knowing Santana's tendency to sometimes lose herself within her books, Mateo hikes up the stairs to the second floor, wondering if his daughter isn't perhaps in her bedroom reading.

Santana, my love? he calls. Where have you gotten away to?

It surprises Mateo very much to find Santana's bedroom empty. For an instant, his heart pricks with fear, and he begins to worry, but then he hears it: the murmur of a little voice, coming from down the hallway.

Intrigued, he follows the sound towards Alma's master bedroom. The door is open, so Mateo ducks inside. He expects to see Santana right away, but he doesn't. Instead, he hears her speaking, her voice disembodied but coming from somewhere nearby.

It takes Mateo several seconds to realize that Santana is inside her grandmother's walk-in closet.

She speaks in sharp, clear Spanish but uses a queer, creaky voice not her own.

El trabajo compartido es más llevadero. No dejes para mañana lo que puedas hacer hoy. ¿Me estás escuchando, Santana? ¡Más rápido!

Mateo creeps to the edge of the closet, curious beyond curious to learn what game Santana might be playing. When he peeks through the crack in the door, he sees at once.

Santana wears her grandmother's felt hat and costume necklace. Four of her ten fingers poke into the wrong holes in her grandmother's dinner gloves. She carries her grandmother's clutch, waving it about as though it were a baton. Her grandmother's mink stole drapes over her shoulders, so heavy that it causes her to stoop. Red lipstick bombasts her mouth and colors her chin. Discarded shoes, stockings, and petticoats encircle her on the floor.

She watches herself in the mirror hung on the wall and smiles so widely that dimples deepen in her cheeks. When she finishes her little speech, she tosses back her head to laugh. She is oblivious to her papa's presence. She can't stop looking at herself, not for vanity on her own account but for admiration on someone else's.

Though Mateo knows that his mother will be very cross that Santana made a mess of her things, he himself cannot help but feel glad of Santana's trespassing for a moment, for he realizes that it has provided him a window into a peculiar and precious scene.

It is a common thing for little girls to dress up in a grown women's clothing, Mateo knows. How much rarer it is for a father to see clearly the way in which his daughter loves when she thinks that she is alone.

* * *

Some days, Mateo visits Battery Park just so that he can look out over the harbor and see the statue rising up, taking shape into a great, copper goddess.

Other surgeons at the Bellevue claim that the statue is an eyesore, garish in color and offensively French, but Mateo feels great affection for it himself.

He likes the idea of an alliance between America and a place decidedly not America, and he likes the idea of peace and of his country rededicating itself to democratic ideals.

Ever since childhood, Mateo had loved the promises written into the Declaration of Independence and hoped that one day his government and fellow citizens might realize them both better and more fully.

The statue seems like a chance for them to do just that—like it might somehow present a new opportunity to allow life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for everyone on American soil, particularly in the wake of the war.

Mateo tells Santana about how the workers make their progress on the statue, starting in the summer of 1885 and continuing all through the year until the autumn of 1886. He gives her updates as they erect the statue up first to its knees and then to its belly and then to its neck.

Santana is newly seven years old on the day when President Cleveland arrives in New York to dedicate the completed monument.

Hundreds upon thousands of people pour into the city by train and by ferry to attend the ceremony, until not a single hotel or boarding house within city limits has vacancies left at it. The streets babble with the sounds of innumerable voices. At midday, the Chair of Surgery at the hospital declares that every physician not already scheduled to perform procedures may go home to his family to celebrate.

Relieved of his work duties, Mateo happily wades through the traffic until he finally arrives at the bachelor cottage, where he instructs his mother to dress both herself and Santana in their fine clothes at once.

Since the day of her birth, Santana has never ventured beyond the boundaries of Gramercy Park, but today she will do just that, Mateo marks.

When Alma brings Santana downstairs done up in her little bustled coat, gaiters, and white gloves, Mateo gathers Santana into his arms and kisses her forehead.

Would you like to see the statue, little lady? he asks her happily.

See it where? Santana asks, frowning in the direction of the door as Mateo sets her hat upon her head.

She seems to think that her papa has the statue hidden somewhere nearby. She can't seem to imagine where it might be. In the garden? Across the street? Nestled in the heart of the park? She has no concept of a wider world beyond her quiet neighborhood.

Though Mateo chuckles at her confusion, he also cannot help but feel somewhat guilty when he realizes that Santana has grown up not eight miles from the harbor but has never once seen the water for herself.

Let us go down to 5th Avenue, he says in Spanish so that his mother can understand. I hear they will have a parade.

While Santana claps, Alma scowls.

The neighbors will see us, she hisses. Your reputation will be ruined. You ought to let us walk behind you. I can carry her, she protests. You mustn't be so careless.

Mateo sets his own hat on his head.

Santana is my daughter, he says firmly. I want her to remember this day. I will carry her. You may walk along beside me.

And so they set out onto the streets, joining in the throngs on the way to the parade.

With the congestion on the streets, it takes an hour to travel just from Park Avenue past Union Square to the edge of the parade route, but Mateo hardly minds the time they spend in transit. It pleases him so very much to have his little girl outdoors with him, seeing her city for the first time.

Truth be told, Mateo watches Santana watch the revelries more than he watches the revelries themselves. As Mateo looks at her, Santana's eyes jump from face to face in the crowd, reading each one in quick succession. She has never seen so many people in her life, either all at once or in total. She clings to Mateo, her arms slung around her neck, astonished by the commotion on her every side. Fog and rain hang in the air, and Mateo isn't certain if Santana trembles due to the wind or because of her excitement.

It's slow going down the avenues, with the crowds packed shoulder to shoulder. Alma, with her short stature, cannot see more than one foot in front of her at a time, Mateo feels sure. She walks with her hands clasped tightly in front of her over her clutch and her head bowed low. At first, Mateo thinks that she does so out of deference, but then he catches her glancing at him, quick and then away, and knows: Alma doesn't want to embarrass him.

She thinks he is ashamed.

A pain moves through Mateo's heart, and he hugs Santana closer to him.

Come on, Mama! he calls in English, gesturing for Alma to keep pace with him as they make their way into the denser crowds.

By the time they arrive on 5th Avenue, they've already missed the full flurry of ticker tape. While some straggling strips of white still fairy-fall down to the street, the real storm has already passed. Thankfully, the parade itself is still in progress, with wagons and floats done up in all variations of stars and stripes trundling down the road while politicians and important men wave from the beds. A lively brass band plays on the sidewalk.

Mateo holds Santana up so that she can see the excitement.

Look there, sweeting, he tells her, pointing out a platoon of war veterans marching down the avenue in full military dress.

Santana glances at the soldiers for a second, taking in their smart uniforms and the expert manner in which they wield their rifles. She reads the words Seventh New York Militia on the blue banner that they carry proudly in front of them.

What are the Silk Stockings, Papa? she asks, gesturing to the nickname written beneath the unit number. She bites her fingers into her mouth, gloves and all, as she hasn't done since she was very young.

The volume and grandeur of everything seems to awe her.

Mateo laughs. I don't know why, my love, he says, enjoying how wide Santana's eyes grow as the veterans stop and perform an about face and then about again, directly in the center of the street.

Even Alma smiles when Santana gasps and applauds for the maneuver.

The parade continues for another two full hours, but Mateo knows better than to stay in one place for the duration of it. At a lull point, Mateo takes Santana and his mother away from the action in a general southward direction, hopeful that their little party might soon clear the traffic and be able to travel by streetcar the remainder of the way to Battery Park.

Though Santana eventually turns heavy in Mateo's arms, Mateo durst not set her down on the ground, for fear that the crowds might trample her, wee thing that she is. He carries Santana along for many, many blocks, Alma trying to match pace beside him.

But the crowds never clear.

Even after Mateo and his family cut through Washington Square Park, there are still people and noises everywhere around them. Some residents in the high rises along the avenues open their doors to the public, beckoning passersby to come inside to celebrate in a spirit of community and goodwill. Certain shop owners advertise sales in honor of the joyous occasion. Vendors cry out, offering food and drink to those revelers who will pay.

But nowhere is there an available streetcar.

Looking towards the harbor, Mateo can see nothing but bodies packed so closely together that there is scarcely any space between them. Could he perhaps hail a hack? He starts to search around for a driver, but then he feels it: a weight upon his shoulder.

When Mateo glances down, he finds his daughter curled against the crook of his neck, her eyelids closed and her fingers linked as she clings to him, her pillow. She has somehow managed to fall asleep in the midst of all the cacophony. Her little hat tips on her head, upset by how she droops. She breathes deep, serene breaths, as though she were suddenly a toddler once more.

Mateo's heart seams stretch to bursting.

He supposes that today has been an awfully big adventure for such a very little girl.

She hasn't even eaten her supper yet.

While Mateo would like very much for Santana to see the statue, he realizes that it would be close to midnight by the time he could carry her all the way to Battery Park. Even if Mateo could coax Santana into opening her eyes to see the sight, fog and darkness would obscure her view.

Shall we take her home? he asks his mother, patting Santana softly on the back.

Going in the opposite direction from the statue proves easier than going towards it. Mateo and Alma walk from East 4th Street to 3rd Avenue, following 3rd northeast to their own street.

Perhaps ironically, Santana only wakes once they escape from the heart of the crowds and reach the edge of the Gramercy Park neighborhood, where everything is quieter and only a few dozen people occupy the streets, as opposed to a few hundred.

Where are we, Papa? Santana mews, rubbing her eyes with one hand while holding to Mateo with the other. She doesn't bother to lift her head from his neck. She stays in place, mumbling against his shirt collar.

We're almost home, Mateo promises her. You can have a bath, and then we'll put you to bed. Would you like something to eat, precious?

Santana shakes her head no, nestling down more snuggly against Mateo's shoulder. She often turns very quiet when she is very tired. Mateo gives her another pat. The sun has begun to set over the avenues. In the distance, Mateo can still hear all manner of merriment and rejoicing. Gunshots or perhaps cannons fire in salute. The sky bruises to violet behind its rain cloud vale.

Let's get you home, sweet peach, Mateo whispers, kissing Santana's hair.

But then a voice calls out.

Matthew, you dog! Is that you? You must stop, you fool!

Mateo looks to see none other than his friend Stewart standing at the head of the street, waving to him with a brass cane.

His heart ceases to beat within his chest.

By God.

Perspiration breaks out under Mateo's arms and chin. Animal panic grips him. He glances to his mother and sees himself as if through her eyes, clutching Santana to his chest in a way that intimates just one thing.

Suddenly, he feels like he did as a child whenever someone caught him misbehaving, like he would pay any price to suddenly turn invisible. He is horribly, impossibly exposed. It is as if he stands naked before a ravening wolf, with all of his vulnerable parts bare, in danger of the bite.

He considers pretending not to have heard Stewart and simply continuing on his way, but then Stewart starts to walk over to him, face bright with recognition even under the twilight.

Stewart, Mateo chokes out. You scoundrel, what are you doing here?

Just on my way to a party in honor of Bartholdi's old lady, Stewart smirks, gesturing in the direction of the harbor. Did you attend the parade?

I did, Mateo asserts, steeling himself against Stewart asking the next, more inevitable question.

Stewart opens his mouth to speak again but doesn't manage to do it before Santana lets out a little groan against Mateo, stirring in his arms.

Are we there now? she asks, groggy and unaware that Mateo has yet to carry her any further than he had already done when she was last awake.

Mateo feels her eyelashes flutter open against his skin.

For the first time in his life, Mateo wills his daughter not to call him Papa.

Just as she did when she was an infant, Santana somehow seems to perceive Mateo's apprehension. Her body mirrors the tension in his, stiffening as she notes Stewart's proximity for the first time. With the exception of the occasion when Mateo first introduced her to Mr. Bradley, Santana has never been so close to an unfamiliar man before in her life. She has never known Mateo to speak to a stranger in her presence.

All the while, Alma's eyes bore holes into Mateo's back.

Stewart gives Santana a queer look but doesn't ask Mateo who she is, despite his obvious curiosity. Instead, he procures his pocket watch from his waistcoat, checks the time, and sighs.

I suppose I should let you back on your way, he says, though of course he really means that he ought to be going himself.

Aye, says Mateo, only barely managing to keep his voice from trembling. I shall see you at the excision tomorrow, shan't I? Enjoy your party, you dodger.

Stewart smirks and pats Mateo on the arm, And you your journey, old man.

With another wave of his cane, Stewart departs.

And yet his influence lingers with Mateo.

All the way down the street, Mateo can hear his own heartbeat war marching in his ears. He imagines the gossip at the hospital tomorrow, all the questions and insinuations. When he steps onto the front stoop at the bachelor cottage, he can barely manage to produce the house keys from his pocket, not because he has Santana in his arms but because his hands won't cease from quaking. A full minute passes before Mateo manages to turn the lock. Alma says nothing, only scowls. Her silence is for the best. If she were to speak one word to Mateo, he would probably scream.

Mateo doesn't bother to wake Santana for supper. Instead, he takes her upstairs, directly to her bedroom, and lays her down on her bed. Though she is still just a small creature at seven years in age, it is nevertheless much more difficult to move her about nowadays than it was when she was an infant. Mateo is clumsy lifting her legs to remove her shoes and clumsier still picking apart the miniature metal buckles at their straps with his shaking fingers.

He doesn't bother to change Santana into her nightdress for fear of waking her. He simply divests her of her hat, gloves, and coat and then slides her, gracelessly, under her sheets. A few times, she grumbles in her sleep at his touch.

If Mateo has done wrong by her, he will hate himself forever.

For all his efforts, she never saw Liberty Enlightening the World.

* * *

Mateo braces himself when he encounters Stewart at the hospital the next day.

Hello, old dog.

Hello, Stewart.

You missed a very droll party. The imported scotch and cigars were most excellent—in the finest American tradition, of course. I could have used your eye at the billiard table. I'm afraid my wife shall never forgive me for making such impulsive bets. How did your night end? Did you happen to glimpse the fireworks?

I didn't, no. I'm afraid that my apartment faces another high rise.

Ah, that's right. Shame. They were a delight. You ready to excise that abscess from the old man's mouth? I bet I can get it all in one go.

For your wife's sake, I won't take that bet, but I will retract the lip for you.

Fair enough.

Fair enough.

Neither Stewart nor any of the other surgeons says an intimating word to Mateo throughout the day. No one asks Mateo about the dark little old woman who followed him home from the parade or the even darker little girl he carried for blocks on his hip.

Though he usually wouldn't do so, Mateo spends his whole evening at the bachelor cottage speaking in fluent Spanish to both Santana and Alma. He laughs with them louder than usual, and when Santana sits down at the piano to play, he sings and sings and sings.

He supposes that he should feel very lucky that Stewart didn't realize precisely what it was he saw last night. He supposes that he should feel very lucky for very many things.

As it is, he laughs to mask a silence.

To his great astonishment, part of him wishes that Stewart would have known.

* * *

Santana sings when she feels happy, often without realizing that she does so.

Sometimes, Mateo will be in the parlor reading the evening paper, and he'll hear it—Santana crooning out one of the old San Juan songs from the Boricua dancehalls of his wayfaring youth.

She is totally unself-conscious, her voice still small and sometimes squeaky because she is young but also fine and incredibly pleasant to hear. Her pitch is excellent, though her range remains unstretched as of yet. Mateo can already tell by the sound of her that one day she will be a most accomplished singer, with a voice half warm honey and half chilled wine.

Mateo knows that Santana only sings when she is happy because whenever he finds her after she has finished a song, she runs to him most eagerly and leaps into his arms, all dimples and grins and cascading curls.

Occasionally, she will sing as she plays the piano in the parlor, but, when she does so, those songs inevitably come out different from the ones that she sings to herself in her private, joyous moments. Though her piano songs are by no means less than beautiful or entertaining than her private ones, they sound practiced and metered, altogether more subdued.

When Santana sings her happy songs, it is like they overrun her, breaking free from her like laughter, like birds taking wing from perch to unbounded sky.

Mateo very much enjoys it when Santana sings and inevitably pauses his activities to listen to her.

One night, he hears Santana testing her voice as she clears the table after supper in the dining room.

_En sombra está,  
sin morir, muriendo hoy,  
y mañana sin cesar,  
ni reir ni gozar._

The song she sings is a sad one, but she decorates it with a light, airy lilt, oblivious to its message of heartache—of damned love. Listening to such a small girl sing about a serious matter in such a happy voice causes Mateo to smile, in spite of himself.

Only later does he wonder what Santana has to feel so very cheerful about.

* * *

Mateo must resign himself to the fact that his daughter has fallen in love with a man.

Santana is eight years old, and she is completely devoted to Mr. James Fenimore Cooper and every single word that he has written concerning the vast American frontier.

Usually, the Grolier Club doesn't concern itself with the acquisition of children's literature. However, several gentlemen in the club possess fond memories of Cooper leftover from their own youths and so feel eager to purchase his collected works whenever the opportunity to do so presents itself to the club. By now, the Groliers have amassed a fairly sizable Cooper collection.

While Cooper isn't necessarily the children's literature that Mateo might have chosen for his little girl had he more options, Cooper is certainly what Santana seems to adore.

She talks about him incessantly.

Mr. Fenimore Cooper said that Natty Bumppo did this, Papa. Mr. Fenimore Cooper said that Lionel Lincoln did that.

Whoever would have imagined that a little girl who once would hear no story unless it involved a beautiful princess would suddenly care so much about soldiers, patriots, frontiersmen, and spies?

* * *

The Chair of Surgery elects Mateo to deliver the keynote address at the medical college lecture series, and somehow this means that Mateo owes his colleagues brandy and cigars.

At first, the plans involve only Fowler, Stewart, and Wright wiling the night away at Mateo's apartment, but then someone lets slip to the whole department that there will be a soiree, and suddenly Mateo has committed to host a dinner for one-dozen surgeons, including a very important visiting anatomist from Yale.

Initially, Mateo considers renting out a dining hall to house the event, but then Fowler notes that the bachelor cottage would provide the perfect venue.

You have that old house up in Gramercy, he says. You haven't lived in it since medical school. Why not put it to some use? That way, if the Yale fellow gets out of hand, we can just lock him in the garden shed. What do you say, old boy?

When he was in medical school, before he met Bonnie, Mateo used to host smoking parties at the bachelor cottage. Whenever he and his classmates performed well on an examination or impressed a professor, they would end up in his parlor, enjoying the highest quality pipes and drinking bourbon. Of course, whenever he and his classmates performed poorly on an examination or disappointed a professor, they would end up in his parlor, enjoying the highest quality pipes and drinking bourbon.

It is how the house came by its moniker of bachelor cottage with which to begin.

Once Fowler reminds everyone of the existence of the bachelor cottage, no one wants to attend the dinner party at any other location.

Of course, Mateo knows that he could make some excuse—that he could claim that the bachelor cottage is undergoing renovations or that it has no working stove or that the neighbors might object to such a large crowd of rowdy surgeons descending on Gramercy Park for an evening gathering.

But there is something inside Mateo that has grown weary of making excuses.

On the night of the statue dedication, Stewart flashed Santana a queer look, but it was as if he didn't see her at all otherwise.

Part of Mateo—some daredevil in him, some rapscallion, some insurmountably proud father—wants Stewart, Fowler, Wright, and everyone else, including the anatomist from Yale, to finally, finally see his little girl.

Even if Mateo cannot claim Santana in public, he does not want her to go unnoticed by the world forever. He wants to do right by her. He wants to show her that he is not ashamed to have her in his house.

He schedules the party for Friday night, at the bachelor cottage.

When he tells his mother the news, she does not speak to him for days.

* * *

Alma invents a thousand new rules that Santana must follow on the night of the party: Santana is not to speak to anyone unless spoken to directly, but she must say please and thank you and greet the guests who acknowledge her by their respectful titles, should she have the chance. If she refers to Mateo, she must call him the Good Doctor because that is what his colleagues know him to be. She must not call him Papa, which is her own private name for him. She mustn't get underfoot or make a nuisance of herself. And when Alma tells her to go to sleep, she must do so immediately, without complaint, even if there are still guests in the house.

Mateo tells Alma not to be so iron-hearted and to allow Santana to enjoy the evening, for God's sake, but secretly he also feels glad to have his mother's practicality to balance out his own foolhardy.

He is not naïve enough to suppose that he can invite a dozen people into the bachelor cottage without posing a risk to himself and his family, of course, but he also knows that he is far less flustered by the prospect of having his colleagues in his second home than he perhaps should be.

Though Mateo would never admit it to anyone, a very small something inside him almost wishes that someone would catch him in his lies—that one of the guests at the party would notice that there is a resemblance between Mateo and the pretty little girl in the corner, that there is some likeness in them. It is an ill-informed impulse, Mateo knows, but, all the same, he cannot help how he feels.

Santana is the best part about him, and hiding her digs at him to the point where he almost cannot abide it.

On Thursday night, Mateo asks Santana, Little lady, would you like to come downstairs and sing a song for all the doctors tomorrow evening? They would love to hear your voice, I'm sure.

Santana ducks her head shyly but then gives the smallest of nods.

You would? Mateo affirms, smiling.

Santana nods again, more vigorously.

Splendid! Mateo says. I should like very much for my friends to see you.

Santana smiles now. Okay, Papa, she says.

* * *

In the hours leading up to the party, Alma bathes Santana and clothes her in a fine dress of plum faille with ivory lace along the collar and cuffs, tying a velvet ribbon into Santana's hair and dries out and combing through Santana's curls until they shine under the electric lights.

With an insistence that borders on fervency, Alma pleads with Santana not to dirty herself or to do anything to damage her dress during the evening. Again and again, Alma bids Santana to recite the new rules, listening and muttering along as Santana does so.

Yes, you mustn't pester Papa. You mustn't call him Papa in front of the guests. It would be vulgar to do so. You must been quiet and polite. No silliness, Santana, yes.

When the guests begin to arrive just at seven o'clock, Alma answers the door as though she were the housemaid and not Mateo's own mother. Santana huddles between the doorway to the parlor and the kitchen, watching as more people enter her home all at once than have ever occupied it in total during her lifetime before, even including the plumbers who put in the new pipes three years ago.

The surgeons enter the parlor, where Mateo has drinks and hors d'oeuvres waiting for them. They clap him on the back and greet him with all manner of affectionate abuses. He helps them to light their pipes and tells them about the furniture and fixtures in the room as they ask. Though he knows that he probably oughtn't to do so, he cannot help but glance at Santana whenever he gets the chance.

Alma moves coats and hats into the maid's quarters just off the kitchen, and though Santana steps aside in the doorframe to allow Alma passage through, she doesn't ever stop staring at the crowd gathering in the parlor. Smoke and laughter fill up the room. Santana knots her little hands together in front of her, nervous about the new sights and sounds.

She looks very much like Bonnie, her eyes so full of worry and her expression so somber.

When Alma signals to him that everyone has arrived, Mateo laughs his guests into the dining room. Alma and Santana don't join the party at the table, but they do bring out a few last-minute additions to the spread, bearing steaming plates and tureens straight from the kitchen. For the first time, the surgeons seem to notice the old woman and the little girl's existence.

They say, Splendid, missus, as Alma sets down the gravy boat upon the table.

Wright leans over and nudges Mateo as Santana trails her.

That is your maid's ward, isn't it? Her granddaughter? Does the poor child not have a mother?

No, Mateo flusters. Um, she passed away.

Wright nods. How good of your maid to raise the child, then. And how good of you to allow your maid to keep an orphan at your house.

Mateo can hardly taste his food for his anxiety. What has he done, bringing so many sets of eyes into the place where he keeps his secrets?

Alma and Santana wait in the kitchen for the surgeons to take their meal. They make no noise and only appear when they start to hear chairs pushing away from the table. Alma and Santana appear, silent and mousy, to clear the dirtied plates and silverware away to the kitchen sink. Alma has dressed Santana in a little pinafore over her dress so as to protect it from spills when they do the washing. She doesn't meet Mateo's eyes as she passes him on the way to the kitchen.

Mateo's heart seams tug tight as he counts the dirtied dishes and realizes how very much work his aged mother and little daughter have ahead of them with no one at all to help them with it.

Though Mateo had planned this party harboring a secret hope that one of his friends might apprehend him in his lies and realize that Santana was his daughter, the truth is that none of the surgeons really seems to notice Santana at all. She and Alma are servants and may as well be the same color and pattern as the wallpaper in the house. No one really pays attention to them except for Mateo, who can scarcely think about anything otherwise.

As the surgeons get to their brandy and begin to light their cigars, Mateo strains to hear the faint scrape of silver against porcelain coming from the back part of the kitchen. He imagines Santana on her little footstool in her pretty dress, scrubbing plates clean in the sink. Why had he been so foolish as to think that his friends would give a damn about her? How great was his stupidity to suppose that they would recognize her right away or even really look at her at all?

A deep ache scrapes at Mateo's heart as he realizes that the most important thing in his life is utterly invisible to his friends and colleagues.

Will you excuse me for one moment? he asks, handing his drink over to Fowler.

He pokes his head into the kitchen. Is everything all right in here? he asks, finding Alma and Santana standing side-by-side at the sink, just as he had envisioned them.

Since he asks the question in English, Santana is the one to answer it.

Yes, Good Doctor, she says, totally innocent and earnest, without one hint of irony in voice. She doesn't bother to turn to him as she sets another plate into the drying rack on the counter.

Something burns at Mateo's eyes and chokes at his throat. For the life of him, he cannot seem to manage a reply, so he returns immediately to the company of his guests.

As the evening wears on, the surgeons of the Bellevue tell old stories and make brandied jokes. They slap one another on the backs and call out slapdash wagers that they never intend to honor. Eventually, fueled by drink and clouded by smoke, they gather around the piano and begin to sing and play, forming a raucous chorus. Only half of them seem to know the lyrics to the selected songs at any given time, and even less of them than that can manage to sing on pitch.

All the while, Mateo struggles, his heartstrings pinched as though caught on some snag. He feels bleary and distant for reasons that have nothing to do with alcohol. His mother and daughter have undoubtedly finished washing the dishes by now. Are they hiding out in the old maid's quarters, waiting for the party to end? Tonight, Mateo has made them prisoners in their own home in a different way than they have ever been before.

Pardon me, he says to Stewart, handing over his brandy. I shall return shortly.

Are you all right, old dog? Stewart asks, muddled.

Yes, yes, Mateo says. I just want to show you something.

Then, in a louder voice, he interrupts the chorus to Home! Sweet Home!, talking over the bridge of it and waving his hands about.

I want to show you all something! I-I have the most delightful—there is a most delightful little performer here. I'll bring her out for you, shall I?

He goes over to the door to the kitchen and calls. Santana! Come sing for the nice surgeons, won't you? Come sing us Sailing, Sailing, please?

Seconds elapse before Santana appears through the door from the maid's quarters. Alma hangs at her back but daren't to follow her.

For her part, Santana wears a very shy expression, shrinking down and grabbing at her skirt with tiny, fretting hands. She has changed out of her pinafore and looks like such a little darling in her pretty dress. When Mateo beckons to her, she bites her lip and ducks her head before scampering over to him.

She has the most pleasant little voice, Mateo explains to the surgeons as he leads her into the parlor.

I didn't know we'd be getting a minstrel show after dinner! chuckles the visiting anatomist from Yale.

Mateo ignores him, beckoning Santana over to the piano, where he himself edges Wright from the bench and slides in to play so that Santana can sing. The more attentively the surgeons watch her, the more Santana seems to shrink. Her hands knot together before her, and she ducks over to edge of the piano, standing just beside Mateo but not touching him or meeting his eyes. She balances on one foot, as little children sometimes do, wobbling as she leans against the instrument. When Mateo asks her if she is ready, she gives a small, quick nod.

Her nervousness doesn't reveal itself in her voice.

She sings clearly, prettily, with no wavering or mistakes in her song.

_Sailing, sailing over the bounding main,  
where many a stormy wind shall blow  
'ere Jack comes home again._

The song isn't especially dramatic—it boasts no crescendo or sharp lyrical turn—and yet Mateo cannot help but feel something build inside him as Santana sings the words. It as if he can perceive the way his heart seams are all tied up in her, how her every move and venture affects him as though it were in part his own. The tightness in his throat from earlier turns thicker and more persistent. When he looks around at his colleagues, he doesn't see it if there is any fixedness or indulgence in their smiles. He sees only them seeing her.

When Santana finishes her song, everyone claps, and no one louder than her papa.

Mateo only just resists giving her a kiss upon the head.

Rather, he cheers, Very well! Very well!

Santana smiles shyly and presents a small curtsy.

Later that night, after the guests have gone home, Mateo trudges upstairs to find Santana already asleep in her bed, changed into her plain nightclothes out of her faille dress, her hair in a plain braid with no pretty ribbons or special curls. Though he knows that he will wake her in so doing, Mateo sits down upon the edge of Santana's bed and pets over her brow with his hand.

Sure enough, Santana eyes peek open.

Did you enjoy your party, Papa? she asks in a scratchy voice.

I enjoyed you, Mateo says honestly, bending down to finally kiss her as he pleases.

* * *

It is a strange thing to happen after such a clement March.

The rainfall begins on Sunday but turns to snowfall after midnight. The temperature plunges, and, in the ensuing hours, the snowfall swells into a blizzard. Sleet pelts the pavement, hard, and wind shrieks down the alleyways.

Overnight, the blizzard buries the Brooklyn Bridge. By dawn, it has halted the traffic at the Grand Central Depot. Many telegraph and electrical wires collapse beneath the extra weight of the precipitation. Hundreds of people in the city require medical care to treat against frostbite and the effects of hypothermia.

The Chair of Surgery tips schoolboys to dig his surgeons out from their homes and escort them all the way to the Bellevue for work. The boy who arrives at Mateo's apartment in the darkness before dawn greets Mateo with a very sour look, his face chapped from the wind.

Your boss didn't pay me well enough for this, he gripes, propping his shovel over his shoulder.

When Mateo hears the howl of the storm through the open door, he cannot help but agree.

Mateo follows the schoolboy all the way to the Bellevue on foot through bone-biting wind and aggressive snowfall. The going is miserable and frigid, and the two travelers take nearly an hour to traverse the eight-tenths of a mile distance between Mateo's apartment and the hospital, their feet submerging deep into the drifts and stuttering over icy patches.

By the time they reach East 26th Street, both Mateo and the boy tremble and clutch at their ears, their skin peeled raw from the arctic bluster. Mateo invites the boy into the Bellevue to warm himself for a spell, and they enter the Bellevue's main entrance hall together to find it already packed and lively with the boy's compatriots.

Raucous chatter echoes around the vast space.

Someone ought to bring them some coffee, Mateo says, meeting Wright at the entrance to the doctors' dining room.

That one is defacing the plaque to Valentine Mott, Wright observes. I don't think anyone ought to bring them anything.

Mateo spends the day treating patient after patient. He amputates frozen toes and fingers, applies turpentine to chilblains, sutures wounds on those unfortunate persons who have slipped on ice, and helps to revive at least a dozen souls who would have otherwise succumbed to the cold.

Despite the Chair of Surgery's best efforts to assemble his full staff, many surgeons and even more medical doctors never report to the hospital for duty. Amongst those physicians absent are both Fowler and Stewart. Interns attempt to fill in and assume the places of the senior surgeons but haven't either the experience or practical skills to be of much utility. Eventually, the Chair of Surgery decides to strike out from the hospital to the surrounding neighborhoods in order to try to roust up some more of his surgeons himself.

With so many doctors unable to travel from their homes to the hospital, Mateo must perform duties both medical and surgical. He seldom has a moment to sit down and doesn't even take a lunch. Despite his best efforts, Mateo watches helplessly as numerous patients die. Though he knows that many of them were beyond his help when they arrived at the hospital, his stomach still clenches into knots. For a few minutes, Mateo locks himself in a broom closet off the surgical ward, just so that he can catch his breath.

He aches to go home to Santana.

When he spots the Chair of Surgery returned to the wards an hour later, he asks, When will the next shift arrive to relieve us?

The Chair shakes his head.

There is no next shift, Lucas, he says, disapproving of the situation. I dug my way here by shovel on my own power. There is no transportation anywhere and no telegraphs. We must all remain at the hospital tonight to care for the patients. They say that there are twenty inches of snow outside right now. We can only hope that the city will clear some of it by tomorrow so that our colleagues can come here to our aid. This is how it was in the war, lad. Precisely like it, I'm afraid.

Back before he met Bonnie, while he was still a medical student, Mateo never used to much mind spending long hours at the hospital, but now he feels quite differently.

Though Mateo knows that his mother and daughter are undoubtedly safe and snug inside the bachelor cottage just a few blocks away from where he is now, he cannot help but worry for them. Even if they are well, they will fret when he doesn't come home to them tonight. He has never failed to come home to them without advancing some kind of warning before.

Mateo goes down to the hospital entrance hall and finds his schoolboy amongst the others.

I will pay you twenty-five dollars, he says, to deliver a message for me.

* * *

Mateo presents the boy with ten dollars up front and promises to send him the rest at a later date, after he has successfully delivered the message. Mateo then spends the rest of the afternoon, evening, and night working at the hospital. He takes a very small dinner of beef aspic from the kitchen and sleeps on a spare cot on one of the men's wards for a few hours but otherwise remains at his toil without ceasing for an entire day and night.

In the wee hours, long after the clock strikes twelve, Mateo dozes off sitting bedside vigil over a man whose terrible chilblain ulcers burst and required lancing. His head rests upon his fist.

Good morning, Matty, says Fowler, tapping Mateo on the shoulder, stirring him from his sleep.

Fowler presses a cup of coffee into Mateo's hands.

The good news, Fowler says, is that the snow has slowed. The bad news is that it is still the Great White Hurricane, and, God, the wind is awful. I only managed to make it here by pulling myself along with an alpenstock.

What time is it? Mateo groans, fumbling for his pocket watch.

Five o'clock in the morning, Fowler says.

Our boss doesn't pay me well enough for this, Mateo gripes.

Fowler is one of the few physicians who manages to report for his duties, despite the slowing snowfall. Stewart never arrives at the hospital during the blizzard. Though everyone jokingly attributes Stewart's absence to his chronic carousing, they know that, in reality, the poor fellow has been snowed-in. He is not alone in his misfortune, as many other doctors and students cannot make their ways from their homes to the hospital.

Mateo imagines that conditions are much the same all across the city.

The nursing school, which has its main housing unit just across the street from the Bellevue, attempts to cycle its trainees in and out of the wards on an interval schedule for both the aid and benefit of the doctors and wellbeing of the trainees themselves. There are very few fully trained nurses present at all, excepting for the superintendent, her assistant, and one of the senior nurses, who takes charge of the entire maternity ward.

Ten babies are born during the blizzard, and Mateo delivers three of them.

Even just the sight of those newborn babies causes Mateo to pine for Santana more.

He has never gone two whole days without seeing her, ever since she was born. He imagines her waiting in the bay window for him, wrapped up in a blanket from her bed, her breath fogging a spot on the window. His heart seams pull in her direction. He had not realized until now that she had become his moor. He spends the rest of his day adrift.

By nightfall on Tuesday evening, so much gore and blood spatters Mateo's suit jacket that he must doff it and wear only an apron over his shirt. His jaw feels stiff and his shoulders slump. He can scarcely hold his scalpel straight when draining boils and incising abscesses.

No new patients have come in since Tuesday morning, but those patients who were already in the hospital still require constant care.

Go get some sleep, Matty, Fowler says, catching him in the hallway. You have done enough for the day. No one will miss you for just this little while.

But Santana misses Mateo, and he knows it.

Even drifting to sleep, he dreams of ways to return himself safely home to her.

* * *

By Wednesday morning, the snow and wind have slowed considerably. Whereas before they came in a gale, now the snow descends at a lilt, like little stars traipsing lazily down from heaven, and the wind barely whispers at all. Snowflakes gather in pretty piles upon the sidewalks and promenades. They sparkle against the streetlights.

If Mateo had not witnessed the blizzard for himself, he would find it difficult to believe that it had ever been a deadly thing at all.

Though the Chair of Surgery advises Mateo to wait until the city municipal workers can clear the roads outside, Mateo insists that he must leave the hospital at once.

I'll go mad if I must remain here another hour, he says.

With warm rags wrapped around his hands and his overcoat buttoned to its collar, Mateo strikes out straightaway for the bachelor cottage, despite the bitter cold. As he exits the hospital, he finds the city half-submerged into white, as though it were Atlantis and the drifts the rising ocean.

When he steps off the stairs and onto the street, he sinks all the way down past his knees into the accumulation and shivers as snow intrudes into shoes. He goes along with his hands buried deep inside his pockets and tries to hurry as best he can, eager to have his reunion with Santana.

It takes him over an hour to travel from East 26th Street to Gramercy Park and another hour after that to regain feeling in his feet again.

Alma scolds Mateo for being so foolish as to come home before the snow had stopped altogether.

You should have remained at the hospital, she fusses. Santana and I would have gotten along just fine without you until the skies had cleared.

Santana tells Mateo another story, though—not in her words but in the way that she climbs into his lap while he sits warming in the parlor, wrapping her little arms around him as though they were a shawl. She remains with him for a long, long time, very still and with her cheek pressed up against his shoulder.

I thought it might never stop snowing, she mumbles.

Mateo knows her thought precisely.

Once he has thawed his extremities, Mateo has a bath and changes into fresh clothes. Alma feeds him a healthful broth for lunch, and he stokes the fire with hickory logs, filling the house with a hearty, sweet smell.

In the hours before supper, Mateo bundles Santana up in her bustled coat and pulls her wool hat down over her ears.

Come outside with me, he coaxes, leading her from the door into the whited garden, where flakes catch in her curls and she breathes in little bursts of exquisite, frozen awe.

Mateo shows Santana the iced bushes, the places where snow has curled into dead flower heads and made itself a home. In some areas in the yard, the drifts are so deep that Mateo must carry Santana in his arms or else Santana will become stuck all the way up to her middle. Mateo helps Santana to build a little tunnel out of snow against one of the willow trees, teaching her to hollow out the structure and scaffold it as they go along.

Now the squirrels can have some shelter from the storm, he teases, lying on his belly and peering down the hole.

Santana smiles at him.

I think they could just hide in the tree, if they liked, Papa, she tells him placidly.

I suppose they could, says he.

When Santana begins to shiver, Mateo doffs his overcoat and wraps it around her shoulders. He pulls her hat down more tightly over her ears and checks to see that her gloves and sleeves meet at her wrists.

Alma watches from the open door, arms crossed over her apron, all the while.

You'll catch your death, she scolds her son. You must both of you return to the house.

I shall not, and we must not, Mateo says, beckoning Santana toward the front yard with him. His old stubbornness flares, warming him from the insides out. Would you care to join me for a stroll, little lady? he asks his daughter.

On any other day, Mateo wouldn't dare to take Santana down the street with him, but somehow he feels safe to do so now, with her all wrapped up in winter clothing and everything around them obscured in white.

Under the snowfall, boundaries have disappeared. The street and sidewalk and yards alongside them are all one, except in places where there are fences. Clouds wispy in the stratosphere press in close upon the earth, and the whole world feels insulated, like it is there for any man who would dare to claim it for his own to take. With so few people out and walking, Mateo imagines that he can go anywhere.

He would like to go everywhere with Santana.

How would you like to visit the park? Mateo asks his daughter.

I think that I would like it very well, she says.

And so Mateo leads her along.

When they reach the gates to Gramercy, Mateo stoops down and pulls Santana close to him by the lapels of his own overcoat, which Santana still wears draped over her shoulders as though it were a cape. With his face just level to hers and them standing very close together, Mateo grins a silly grin at Santana and then burrows his hand inside the right coat pocket.

Papa! Santana protests, giggling and trying to squirm away. What are you doing?

I must find my keys, angel, Mateo tells her, keeping hold of her by one of the over-long coat sleeves. His fingers brush upon cold metal wrapped inside wool. Ah! There they are.

He produces his prize, showing the key ring to Santana to prove that he meant well and then standing to unlock the park gate. He gestures for Santana to go inside.

After you, he says.

For all of Mateo's stubbornness, he and Santana do not actually spend so very much time inside Gramercy Park after all.

They walk just two short paths together, hand-in-hand and mostly in silence, watching the way flakes collect upon various statues and looking back as their own footprints form and then disappear, sinking into fallen snow and then being covered by the falling.

For the first time in several days, Mateo feels anchored to something. A spell seems to come over him and Santana, a deep and symbiotic peace.

All the same, Santana's teeth soon begin to chatter.

Shall we go home? Mateo asks her.

Yes, please, Santana says.

When they arrive back at the bachelor cottage, they find Alma waiting for them at the front door. She wears a furious scowl, and as soon as Santana draws close enough to her, she scoops Santana up into her arms and carries Santana inside the house, as though Mateo had done Santana harm.

Though Santana is now nine years in age and nearly the same size as Alma herself, Alma shows extraordinary strength, lifting Santana as though she weighed nothing. Alma holds Santana like a precious porcelain doll, pressing Santana's face against the crook of her neck, cradling the girl with a savage kind of protection.

You will give her a death chill, Alma snarls, turning fiercely away from Mateo. Our people's blood is so thin. She and I are not meant for the cold.

Mateo scoffs. Your blood is not the only blood she has, he says. He buries his hands in his pants pockets. Santana had fun playing in the snow, didn't she?

I did, Papa, Santana avers as Alma begins to ascend the staircase, ferrying her away.

* * *

With all the hacks and streetcars still closed down and the streets nearly impassable even on foot, Mateo can find no way to return to his apartment after supper. He sleeps over at the bachelor cottage, hoping that his landlord will forgive him for not returning home for another night due to the emergent situation.

So great is Santana's excitement to have her papa in the house at bedtime on a Wednesday night that Alma can scarcely manage to force Santana to go to bed. Every time Alma tucks Santana in, Santana inevitably bounces back into the hallway and down the stairs just a few minutes later, always under the pretense of doing something useful.

Papa, she says, appearing in the parlor, where Mateo sits warming by the fire, would you like me to put a second quilt on your bed, for when you're ready to sleep? I can fetch one from the closet, if you please.

Mateo smiles at her, not unkind. No, that's all right, sweet peach, he tells her. Go back to bed, won't you? Keep your own toes warm. Sweet dreams.

All right, Santana consents, bounding back upstairs to her room. She moves like a little bird, skittish and with excess energy. If she isn't careful, she might just fly away.

Mateo knows he oughtn't to smile at her disobedience but finds he cannot help himself from doing it.

Only a few minutes later, Santana appears again, hands knotted in front of her. She shuffles, awkward, on the rug, and fidgets at her nightgown.

Are you thirsty, Papa? she asks. I could pour you a glass of water.

Mateo chuckles. No, I'm not thirsty. Are you thirsty, my love?

Santana shakes her head no, too thrilled to speak and unable to do anything for wanting to linger in Mateo's presence so much. She smiles at Mateo, wonderfully bashful, and stares as though she simply cannot see him enough. It tugs Mateo's heart seams loose to witness how much Santana longs for him to stay with her.

¡Santana! ¡Ven a mí mismo! Alma hollers down the stairs.

Perhaps you had better go to sleep, Mateo says, glancing at his pocket watch.

Will you still be here in the morning? Santana asks.

I'm not certain whether I will be here in the morning or not, Mateo tells her honestly. I really ought to go to work, if I can.

A twinge passes over Santana's face, and Mateo knows that Santana has just made what she supposes is a wicked wish within herself. His heart seams loosen yet again.

Come here so that I can give you a kiss, Mateo says to Santana, and she does, and he does, and then she goes to bed.

Mateo remains in the parlor for a long, long while after that, until the fire dims to ruddy coals, and he has smoked his pipe down to the sourest dottle, and he waits in the darkness, alone. Outside, the snow rests, phantom, beyond the window, muddling Manhattan with its unceasing white.

* * *

When it is finally warm outside, Santana waits in the garden for Mateo to arrive home from work and runs down the walk to meet him as he appears at the gate, leaping up into his arms as soon as he makes it safely inside the boundaries of the yard. She wears Sweet Williams laced through her hair and giggles as Mateo spins her around and around in circles.

Sometimes Mateo rags her and says, You are growing too big for me to spin!

Santana just laughs and rebuffs him, No, I'm not, Papa! I'm still just a little girl!

In truth, Santana is growing every day. Though she is still just a wee thing, small for her age and utterly dainty, she has begun to look more mature as of late, her features becoming less childish, setting into something permanent.

She has already lost many of her primary teeth and has two large, front incisors almost too big for her mouth. Her cheeks are not as full as they once were, though she does still retain her dimples, a fact which pleases Mateo greatly.

When she walks along beside her papa, she comes up to his waist in height. She has learned to be entirely proficient in writing on her own and holds her pencils with ease. Her every motion and reflex is more practiced than it was when she was younger. In many ways, she has become graceful.

You are hardly my little lady anymore, Mateo tells her. You are my grown-up lady instead.

I'm always your little lady, Santana protests.

While Santana still looks mostly like Alma, she becomes more and more like Bonnie in her mannerisms and little expressions with every passing year. She especially takes after her mother in the way that she indulges Mateo, abiding his nonsense talk with good humor and responding to his silliness with a measured practicality and patience most unusual for a child of her age.

For instance, when Mateo tells her that the hippopotami at the Central Park Zoo sing whenever the moon grows full and that their song is audible all over Lower Manhattan, Santana pats his arm in a very long-suffering way and shakes her head, as though he were her old dear.

No, Papa, I don't think that they do or that it is, she says. I sleep with my windows open in the summertime, you see. I would have heard them, don't you think?

Maybe you just weren't listening, Mateo teases.

A little smile curls Santana's lips. Then I shall have to listen the next time, she says reasonably. When is the next full moon?

At age nine and a half years, Santana is still a most avid little reader, though she has expanded her tastes to include all sorts of novels beyond only those penned by Mr. James Fenimore Cooper. She sometimes enjoys reading serials with Mateo from the literary journals to which he subscribes, and, though she still prefers children's stories when she can have them, she also begins to read more adult works and to ask very intelligent questions concerning them.

In addition to encouraging her reading, Mateo also supplies Santana with access to lithographs and reproductions of fine art from the Grolier Club's sprawling collection. He shows her photographs from the Louvre and prints of works from the Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassic, Romantic, and Modern eras.

While Alma often protests that Mateo's art selections are vulgar and inappropriate for a little girl like Santana to view, Mateo delights in watching his daughter consider beautiful portraits and seeing her memorize the styles of various masters.

Santana always seems incredibly grown up indeed sitting with an art book open across her lap.

I like these, she tells Mateo, pointing to the pictures. They're so very agreeable.

You're so very agreeable, Mateo tells her in return.

* * *

The Chair of Surgery and the Bellevue Medical College appoint Mateo as a Lecturer in Clinical Surgery and a Demonstrator of Anatomy and pass along their recommendation to him that he consider applying for faculty positions, should he feel so inclined.

The appointment comes as a great honor to Mateo, and especially considering his relative youth.

Unfortunately, it requires that Mateo spend longer hours at the hospital than he has ever done before, even during the clinical years of his medical school training.

At first, Mateo convinces himself that if he just works harder and more efficiently, he will still be able to make it home on the five o'clock streetcar to see Santana before supper, as has always been his custom. However, soon he realizes that it simply isn't possible for him to address his students, evaluate their performances, attend to his myriad administrative duties, and still perform his own surgeries, all between the hours of five o'clock in the morning and half-past four o'clock in the afternoon. Even if he were to cancel all his own private procedures at his office for the day, he still could not manage to attend to all his duties.

Time and time again, Mateo finds himself running down the hospital steps onto East 26th Street with his necktie undone, his jacket unbuttoned, half of his notations left unfinished in his office, and the bell at Our Lady of the Scapular tolling seven o'clock in the distance.

When he finally arrives at the bachelor cottage, he can see pigeons roosting, silhouettes, in the trees bordering the garden. His dinner is always cold, and he can scarcely bear to look Santana in the eyes.

Alma won't permit Santana to wait out in the yard for Mateo after dark, but Santana watches for Mateo at the front door, peering out from the foyer, taking his bag from him as soon as he steps inside the house.

Isn't that very big for you? Mateo asks her.

Not so very much, Santana says in her serious way.

She helps Mateo to remove his hat and shoes and then quickly scampers off to hide them in the maid's quarters so that Mateo will be at home—so that he cannot leave her, at least not for a while.

Mateo knows that if he does not change something, his heart strings will all but disintegrate down into dust.

Part of him supposes that he ought to express to the Chair of Surgery that, though he deeply regrets to do so, he must be obliged to resign his appointment, for he has found himself ill-suited to it. However, part of him is too much a coward—or too selfish, perhaps—to do anything so bold.

Mateo has striven for nearly fifteen years to obtain such a position as the one he currently holds, and his father worked for thirty years before him to afford Mateo even the opportunity to so strive. In truth, Mateo is not an ambitious man, as far as surgeons go, but he had maintained this one hope for himself, ever since he first matriculated at the Bellevue.

Ever since before Santana was born.

Mateo knows that a father ought to willingly give everything for his daughter, and he would give his very life for Santana if ever a situation required that he do so, both unquestioningly and in a trice.

Must he give up his appointment, though? Ought he to relinquish it?

The appointment comes with an increase in salary, and, should Mateo ever join the faculty, it will also come with job security, for Mateo will be able to lecture at the medical school as a professor even long after he has become too frail to perform operations on patients at the hospital.

Though Mateo has always been a man of means, and particularly following his father's death, when he inherited his father's old fortune, he nevertheless keeps an especial motivating thought in the back of his mind like a jam jar on a shelf in a pantry: namely, that whatsoever wealth he accumulates in his lifetime will be for Santana's maintenance and comfort for the duration of hers.

Mateo cannot often suffer himself to contemplate Santana's future, but on the rare occasions when he does so, he realizes that there may come a day when his money will be the only thing which persists for Santana's support.

In some ways, it seems very foolish to give up a job he has taken for the purpose of providing for her for her sake.

If Bonnie were still alive, what would she tell Mateo to do? To worry about the money? His reputation? His career? Or to never fuss concerning any of such things? To mind his time better? To spend his hours at home?

When Mateo importunes his mother for her opinion, Alma frowns at him, appalled that he would even ask her such a trifling question.

Santana is young, she says tersely. She will learn not to miss you so much as she takes on more years.

Dissatisfied with his mother's answer and dissatisfied even more with himself, Mateo practices and refines one-thousand speeches in his mind, explaining to the Chair and to the hospital board why he cannot continue in his duties.

Some of his speeches are very reasonable and succinct, while others are grand confessions, wherein he finally reveals to his colleagues and superiors that he is not who they suppose him to be and that he has a daughter, a precious, dark-eyed little girl who sometimes looks quite like her grandmother and sometimes quite like her angel mother—her angel mother who passed on years ago.

Mateo daydreams about giving these speeches in the medical college amphitheater as he rides his streetcars to and from the hospital and as he lies abed at night.

Each time he comes home to find Santana waiting for him with her sad-happy smile, he resolves to finally give one of his speeches when he can.

But, ultimately, he never seems to be able to do it.

Mateo sees the Chair of Surgery rounding the wards and disciplining the interns, and his heart fails him. He holds his tongue, swallows his speeches, and tries to convince himself that he is being sensible. He swears to himself that he will devise some better way to go about what he feels that he must do. Somehow, he will be a better doctor. Somehow, he will be a better father. Somehow, he will be a better man.

In the end, he does nothing except to buy Santana bottles of nickel sarsaparilla from the corner drugstore on Friday evenings, as a treat.

He tells Santana that the sarsaparilla is a reward for her good behavior—for her heeding her grandmother and helping with the dishes all week long—but really it is an apology from him to her for things he cannot bring himself to say.

There are so many lessons that Mateo has learned about being a father since Santana was born.

His newest lesson is this: that perhaps it is not so difficult for a parent to die for his child as it is for him to live for her.

* * *

Maybe Alma is right.

Maybe Santana does become accustomed to the new way of things.

Maybe Mateo does, too.

He does become more efficient in his duties with time. He learns to finish his notations over lunches and between surgeries, to delegate minor procedures to junior residents, to cut through a certain alleyway to meet his streetcar just as the bell tolls half past six o'clock at night. He arrives home to the bachelor cottage just as the pigeons settle into their roosts. Sometimes he finds Santana in the parlor, sitting in the bay window with her books, and wonders if she isn't really watching over the yard in wait for him. If she is, she doesn't admit as much.

She also doesn't press her face to door in the front foyer anymore.

Alma moves supper to seven o'clock. She spaces out Santana's baths so that they only fall on Saturday nights and Wednesday mornings and don't take up so very many of the precious hours that Santana has to spend with her papa. Without Mateo importuning her to do so, Alma also allows Santana a later bedtime and complains less concerning the books and artwork that Mateo brings to Santana from the Grolier Club.

For her part, Santana says nothing of these changes to her daily life, until one night when Mateo has tucked her into bed and read some of Sara Crewe to her for her nightly story.

He thinks that she has fallen to sleep until he douses the lamp at her bedside.

Papa? peeps Santana's little voice through the darkness. She draws a quick, shuttering breath, and then says, I'm forgetting your daytime face. When will I next see it?

I-I suppose on Saturday, Mateo replies.

On Saturday, Santana repeats, as if the words were a promise.

Although Santana falls asleep immediately following that short conversation, her words linger with Mateo. His heart seams catch on her bedpost. They begin to unravel as he makes his way down the stairs and to the door. By the time he reaches the street, his heart is a bag that has busted open. There is sawdust strewn out inside his chest. The stars blur and he cannot even distinctly see the shadows of the trees.

* * *

Ever since Santana was very young, Alma has insisted that Santana say grace and cross herself before meals. Usually, Alma and Santana speak the words to the prayer both aloud and in unison. They pray in Spanish, eyes closed, heads bowed, and hands folded.

Though Mateo always folds his hands and bows his head along with his mother and daughter, he doesn't join in reciting the prayer with them.

Frankly, he finds the idea that there is a supreme deity dubious.

If it were solely up to him, he wouldn't force Santana to pray.

Of course, he durst not start a fight with his mother regarding the matter, considering her adamant feelings concerning it. Alma is a superstitious woman, as concerned with the power of jinxes and hoodoo as she is with more corporeal issues, like tending to her garden and keeping house at the bachelor cottage. She believes in angels and devils and God and the healing tears of the Virgin Mary. To this day, it still scandalizes her that Mateo and Bonnie never had Santana baptized. It would appall her to no end if Mateo were to also forbid her from teaching Santana some modicum of her religion.

Alma abides Mateo educating Santana and introducing Santana to fine art, making relatively few complaints, and, in return, Mateo tolerates it when Alma imparts facets of her faith to Santana and teaches Santana to pray.

Mateo contents himself to the inevitability of the nightly ritual by reasoning that if there ever comes a day when Santana doesn't believe in what her grandmother tells her, she will ask him for his thoughts on the matter, and he, as her father, can tell them to her honestly.

It doesn't occur to Mateo that Santana might cease believing in Alma's religion of her own accord, without consulting him at all.

That is, it does not occur to him that she could do so until she does.

Santana is ten years old, and she will eat rice and pigeon peas for supper, even if she doesn't like them very well—both Mateo and Alma have already told her so.

Alma insists that Santana will say grace to give thanks for the food to God, and Santana scowls but does as commanded, crossing herself before lowering her head and clasping her hands together. With a petulant sigh, she closes her eyes, and Alma does the same.

As per his usual, Mateo sits in tolerant silence, enjoying the warm, lively smells of his mother's cooking. He folds his hands and lowers his head, at least to start off.

Both Santana and Alma speak aloud: Te damos gracias, Señor, por estos alimentos que de tu bondad vamos a tomar.

The words are so familiar that Mateo hardly listens to them. Instead, he peeks at the food, enjoying its vivid yellows and rustic greens mixed upon the pure white of a porcelain dish. Gradually, he begins to raise his head. He watches Alma and Santana make their invocation, gaze tracing over Alma's knotted fingers and the arthritic bulbs of her knuckles. He scans across the tablecloth and then up to Santana's face.

It utterly surprises him to find Santana's eyes wide open.

Haz que renovadas nuestras fuerzas, Te sirvamos siempre con alegría.

Santana wears an expression of abject boredom, glancing all around her at the dining room fixtures and only managing to keep pace with the recitation through rote memory. Mateo recognizes her disinterest at once, for he felt the same way as she does now when he was a boy and Alma used to force him to pray over his meals, as well.

He sees a restlessness in his daughter, a lack of conviction in her present occupation. By contrast, Alma is all devotion and supplication, with eyes closed so tightly that she almost appears pained.

Without a word, Santana meets Mateo's eyes, silently questioning if he will reveal her impiety to her grandmother once the prayer has drawn to a close. As is so typical of her, she worries that she has done something wrong.

In that instant, Mateo suddenly knows that Santana does not believe. Despite her grandmother's best efforts, she takes after her papa. Like him, she is a skeptic creature, given over to reasonable doubts and in need of verifiable evidences.

But Santana has done nothing wrong.

Mateo smiles at her, disbelieving.

Slowly, she smiles back at him, disbelieving just the same.

* * *

One of the Groliers manages the home furnishing department at the R.H. Macy Store on West 14th Street, and he offers all the club members a deal on phonographs. Mateo brings one home, along with four cylinders of music. He sets the phonograph on the end table in the parlor, arranges one of the cylinders in the rightful place, cranks the handle, and waits as the machine begins to play the first notes of Joseph Sullivan's Where Did You Get That Hat?

After a few seconds, Mateo hears footsteps on the floorboards, and Santana appears in the doorway to the kitchen, wearing a most curious expression. Alma arrives a moment after her, scowling.

Would you like to have a dance, little lady? Mateo asks Santana, extending a hand to his daughter.

Santana frowns and walks over to the end table, observing the phonograph as if it were a thing that could bite her. Her eyes trace over her own reflection, distorted in the brass trumpet horn, and pick out the sapphire needle, dragging over the cylinders. She reads the words Edison Standard Phonograph emblazoned on the front of the machine.

After a second, she cocks her head to one side and listens, hearing the strains from a full band fill the room, though she and her papa and grandmother are the only living beings present in it.

Slowly, the fear behind her eyes softens and brightens, transforming into a lively sort of wonderment.

Papa, what is it? she asks, pointing to the machine.

It is a phonograph, Mateo tells her. Those little markings on the wax cylinder are a musical dictation. When the needle drags over the dictation, it creates a vibration and produces sound waves against a box. The box amplifies the music through the horn, so that we can hear it. Now I can take you to the Met to hear opera from our very own parlor.

El Diablo lo hizo, Alma mutters, crossing herself.

Mr. Thomas Edison made it, Mateo corrects her. He extends his hand again to Santana. Would you like to have a dance, little lady? he repeats.

Santana bites her lips into her mouth, glancing quickly between her grandmother and her papa. Her eyes are wide and beautifully dark in the way that they always are whenever she feels scared to claim a thing that she truly wants. She is such a careful child, concerned that hoping too much for something will mean that she cannot have it.

After spending her whole life hoping every night that her papa will stay with her until the next morning when he never does, it comes as little surprise that she should be so tentative.

Mateo knows her secret wishes, and his heart seams all but unravel for them.

He starts to reassure her, Santana—

She interrupts him: I don't know how to dance.

Mateo spends the next quarter hour with Santana standing on his toes, holding to both his hands as he waltzes her around the parlor. At first, Santana barely breathes, frightened that she might lose her balance and too excited to speak, but gradually she begins to giggle, joy spilling over from her, lighting her features. When her weight begins to grind down on his bones, Mateo slips back into his black Brogans, using the leather to protect his feet.

All the while, Alma stands in the corner of the room, glaring. Though she doesn't complain aloud about Mateo corrupting Santana, she makes it perfectly clear that she believes that he is. Every few minutes, she lets out a huffy sigh. She crosses her arms so tightly over her chest that it is a marvel she doesn't restrict her own breathing.

In spite of her, music warbles out of the phonograph, tinny but sweet.

You are a most excellent dancer, Mateo tells Santana, lifting her up into his arms so that he can spin her past the bay window. Without thinking, he adds, —just like your mama used to be.

Something darts behind Santana's eyes, a flash almost like the hopeless wanting that was there before.

Spin me again, Papa, she begs.

And Mateo does, and Mateo does, and Mateo does.

* * *

Over the years, Mateo occasionally hosts other parties at the bachelor cottage, like that first one back when Santana was still just a little wisp of a thing. The parties always turn out more or less the same, with surgeons gathering to drink and smoke in the parlor, ignoring the creatures who they suppose are only Mateo's house staff, not realizing that the women are in actuality Mateo's family and the reason for his life.

Mateo always finishes out the night more drunken than his guests and with a bitter burning in his gullet. Sometimes, he calls Santana to sing for the partygoers at the piano, and no matter how old she grows, Santana always does as he requests.

She is a modest person, not just unaware of her own talents but almost disbelieving that she even possesses them at all.

Even for all the praise Mateo has heaped upon her over the years, Santana somehow has difficulty recognizing her own rarity. Her special brand of helpless humility picks at all of Mateo's heart seams and threatens to untie their knots. It pains Mateo to realize that Santana thinks so little of herself. As her father, Mateo should have done more to build her up, to make her see her numerous very exceptional qualities and virtues.

Of course, in his most honest moments, Mateo realizes why it is so impossible for Santana to believe that she is both adequate and praiseworthy.

He had never intended to keep her locked up forever in an ivory tower.

Watching her perform, an ache forms in his throat. Her fingers traipse over the piano keys. Her voice plucks perfect honey and wine notes from the air. He lifts his glass, sloshing his drink.

Isn't she just—? he tries to say. Well, isn't she—?

There are too many words that need saying, and Mateo cannot manage to articulate even one of them.

* * *

Sometimes Mateo and Santana dance to American music from the phonograph, but sometimes Alma plays songs for them on the piano, old danza classics from Puerto Rico. The old woman's hands crab-scuttle over the ivories while Mateo turns Santana in circles. She prefers these songs to the novelty music etched into Mateo's wax cylinders. Somehow it strikes her as more proper, less vulgar.

Ésta es la música, Alma tells Santana. Tu abuelo y yo solíamos bailar a esta canción cuando vivíamos en la ciudad.

When you lived in San Juan? Santana asks, brow furrowing as she tries to imagine the scene.

Yes, Mateo answers, giving Santana another spin. Back when they were rebellious youths, not so much older than you are yourself. Did you know that the government once banned songs like this one, but your grandmother danced to them anyway?

Matthew, you will fill her head with evil thoughts! Alma protests, in Spanish.

I have only told her the truth, Mateo shrugs. He rocks Santana upon the toes of his shoes, grinning as Alma's song draws to a close.

How could anyone ban something so gay? Santana asks.

Alma rolls her eyes and stands up from the piano bench. Mateo laughs, though. See, Mama? he says in Spanish. ¡Tu pequeña rebelde! Your little rebel girl!

Alma rolls her eyes again and tells Santana to ready herself for bed. With nary another pip, Santana nods and hurries out of the parlor and up the stairs, ever obedient. Once she is out of sight, on the second floor of the house, Alma rounds on Mateo.

You ought not to encourage misbehavior in her, she scolds, still speaking Spanish.

Mateo can't help but to laugh a bit. When have you ever known our Santana to misbehave? he asks, pushing his armchair back into place where he had moved it to accommodate the dance. He takes up his suit jacket from where he had set it on the bay window, redressing himself in it and tightening his necktie.

He expects his mother to fluster at the question he posed to her, but she does not do so. Instead, she turns very stern and narrows her eyes at him, scowling.

That girl never had a baptism or a christening, she says gravely. The Devil would not tire himself climbing for a perch on her shoulder.

It is an antiquated notion, chalk with the kind of crude superstition that maddens Mateo whenever he hears it. He scoffs. No old rituals would make Santana a better person than she is now, he says.

Alma opens her mouth to argue, but then Santana's sweet voice calls down from the top of the staircase, interrupting the moment.

Papa, I've washed my teeth! Will you come kiss me goodnight before I go to sleep?

Mateo smirks, victorious. Now you see? he gloats to his mother, taking Santana's polite request as proof of his point. Santana is a good girl. She would sooner suffer than to do any wrong thing, if she knew it were wrong.

Normally, Alma might continue to protest or tell Mateo about his own wickedness for saying such bold things, but as Mateo brushes past her on his way out of the room, she steps aside and crosses her hands before her apron, too furious to speak. She wears a dark look in her eyes and purses her lips together so tightly that she could bruise her own mouth for doing it. Her expression is a dangerous one, like she feels so much so strongly that she could deal damage for her beliefs. Only when Mateo has already passed by her does she finally speak her peace.

That girl should have a baptism. She should take her First Communion.

Mateo ignores his mother and her superstitions, jogging up the stairs to join Santana in the bedroom.

How do you do, my angel? he says, meeting Santana with a grin.

* * *

Alma Lopez is not a good Catholic.

She isn't lapsed, per se, but only because she was never devout to begin with. She has always had some old folk religion in her—some belief in country spirits, in superstitions, in charms and hoodoos that any Catholic priest would tell her come from the Devil.

Mateo doesn't mind her syncretism himself.

To him, all religion is equally unlikely, whether it comes from the Pope or the sugar plantations of Puerto Rico. If his mother insists on believing, then she can believe what she will. It makes no difference to him into what she places her faith.

Of course, the fact that Alma has her superstitions means that she passes them on to Santana.

When Santana has nightmares, Alma advises her to place a glass of water under her bed.

Why, Abuela? Santana asks.

Because it will keep the devils away, Alma tells her matter-of-factly, as if explaining something as provable and veracious as a scientific principle. And if that doesn't work, we can dust your pillowcase with powdered eggshells.

Sometimes, when Mateo encounters difficulties at work or quarrels with other surgeons and tells his mother of it, she will wear ribbons tied to her apron for his sake, and Santana will ask to do the same, as well.

Pray to Saint Martha, Alma tells her.

Yes, Abuela, Santana says.

Mateo suspects that Santana asks to take part in Alma's rituals because they are bizarre and sometimes pretty rather than because she actually believes in them, but he cannot be certain that such is the case. In some ways, Santana seems to find it easier to accept Alma's little devils and angels than Alma's great, omnipotent God and mighty saints.

One day, Mateo arrives home at the bachelor cottage to find Alma and Santana seated on the sofa couch in the parlor, side-by-side and with their heads pushed together. At first, Mateo wonders if they aren't pouring over one of Santana's books, but then he sees what actually holds their attention: Alma's tarot cards spread out over the coffee table in multicolor hues.

Alma is telling Santana in Spanish, —and this card is the Tower. It is a calamitous place.

Mateo smirks, swooping into the room and sitting down on the arm of the sofa couch beside Santana. He points at the Hanged Man, suspended by one leg from a branch.

Y éste es un payaso divertido, he says teasingly, pointing to the Hanged Man's colorful costume. He lives in Upside-Down Land, where the ceiling is the floor.

Alma reaches across Santana to slap Mateo on the arm.

¡No es divertido! she tells him. It isn't funny! The cards have powers. Te dirán secretos y responderán a tus preguntas. Ellos no mienten nunca. They tell secrets and answer your questions. They never lie.

Usually, Mateo tries not to heckle his mother for her superstitions, but today he can't help but roll his eyes.

The cards are only cards, he says firmly.

Santana glances between her grandmother and her father, not daring to say anything, lest she prolong their spat. She reaches down to the table, tracing the Hanged Man with her index finger, a nervous tic, a distraction.

Santana Lopez is a good little girl, perhaps in spite of her father and grandmother.

In that moment, there is no telling what she believes, if she believes in anything at all.

* * *

Mateo hears what sounds like a single hiccup come from the parlor.

Without standing, he calls out, Santana? Are you well, my love?

When Santana doesn't reply, Mateo rises from his seat, leaving his coffee to cool in its cup upon the dining room table. He casts a sidelong glance at his mother washing dishes in the kitchen as he passes by her; she pauses from her work, soapsuds up to her elbows, and looks toward the parlor, stony-faced. She allows Mateo to investigate this particular mystery sans accompaniment.

Santana? Mateo calls, stepping into the parlor.

He finds her sitting in her usual place in the bay window, a book open and propped up against her knees. She holds one hand over her mouth. Her other hand rests on her book, keeping her page.

She is crying.

Mateo can see tears shiny upon her cheeks in the long light of late afternoon.

She seemed to know that Mateo was coming before he even stepped into the room, for she has already begun to straighten herself up, to stop another cry from escaping her mouth. She wipes furiously at her tears with her thumb.

I'm sorry, Papa, she apologizes, setting her book down. I didn't mean for you to hear.

It startles Mateo that Santana wouldn't want him to know that she was upset or hurt or sorrowful. He halts halfway into the room, just beside his armchair. He suddenly feels very embarrassed for having intruded.

Are you well, my angel? he asks gently. Why were you crying?

Santana sniffles, her tears not totally subsided. She shrugs her shoulders, helpless. I don't know why, she says.

Is your book very sad? Mateo asks her.

Santana shakes her head. No, she says, it isn't. I don't know why I was—why I am—crying. It's silly, Papa. It's silly.

She wipes her eyes against her sleeve and breathes a shuddering, jagged breath. When she weeps, she looks so very much like Bonnie, in her brow, in the pout of her lip, in the way her shoulders curl. Red tinges her eyes, and her cheeks appear swollen. She must have been crying for some long while.

Mateo's heart seams snag.

I should go help Abuela wash the dishes, Santana says, rising from her place, leaving her book behind. She passes Mateo, heading for the kitchen. Excuse me, Papa. Pardon.

Once Santana exits the room, Mateo goes over to the bay window and picks up her discarded book, turning it over in his hand so that he can see the cover. It is Jack Tier, or the Florida Reef, a Fenimore Cooper novel, of the sort that Santana liked to read when she was much younger. Mateo flips through the pages, skimming the story, searching for clues. He reads of sailors, ships, camaraderie, the high seas—nothing that should break his daughter's heart at all.

After Santana goes to bed for the night, Mateo asks his mother if Santana has seemed at all unhappy as of late.

Alma shrugs, impassive. All girls of her age cry sometimes, she says, often without reason.

But Mateo isn't so certain that Santana was crying without reason after all.

If Santana were miserable, would she not tell him? Would she make it known to him that there was something in her heart that ached? Mateo hates to think that she would not. He hates to think that there were anything that she felt she could not tell him.

When Santana finishes with her book, Mateo does not return it to the Grolier Club straightaway. Instead, he keeps it for himself at his apartment. He reads it once, then twice. The second time, he cries, though not for anything written on the page.

* * *

For years, Mateo has made the long journey to a little children's clothier in Queens to purchase outfits for Santana. An old widow and her grown daughter own the shop and manage it themselves. When possible, they sew their wares by hand, made to order. In addition to seasonal stock such as jackets and muffs, they also purvey satin dresses, cotton pinafores, precious white gloves, and pretty hats at all times of the year.

One their most appealing qualities is that they can work solely on measurements, without ever meeting the child who will one day don their creations.

Another of their most appealing qualities is their location in Queens, a borough so far away from Mateo's own Lower Manhattan that he can enjoy complete anonymity while he shops there.

At the children's clothier, Mateo goes by the alias James Lucas, but otherwise tells the truth about himself: namely, that he is widower doctor who dotes on his little daughter. The shopkeepers find his enthusiasm for his child delightful.

How is young Miss Lucas? the old widow asks whenever Mateo visits.

Yes, how is she? her daughter echoes, bustling around from behind the counter to take Mateo's hat and overcoat.

Mateo smiles when he answers: She is very well and sends her thanks for the latest set of gloves.

He hands over measurements from Alma so that the women can set to work.

Prior to Santana's birth, Mateo never much gave a damn about clothing, and particularly not tiny handmade dresses and stockings. Now, he rather enjoys attiring his daughter in the latest fashions. She wears everything so well and looks every inch a little lady, no matter the color or cut of her raiment.

Though Alma insists that she could very easily sew Santana sensible clothing at home for a fraction of the money that Mateo pays to the clothiers, Mateo sees no reason not to visit the shop when he has both the means and the predilection to do so.

Usually, the old widow and her daughter are very obliging. Mateo is one of their best and most liberal customers, so they hurry to help him right away and will even make special orders to accommodate his tastes in fabric and design.

But one day, Mateo enters the shop and hands over the measurements, and the widow meets him with a frown.

Is something the matter? he asks her.

She ducks her head, retiring.

Dr. Lucas, she says gently, these measurements—

Are they incorrect? Mateo asks, imagining that his mostly-illiterate mother may have made some mistake in her marks.

The widow shakes her head. No, no, it is just—

She shows the ledger to her daughter, who nods immediately, concurring with whatever the diagnosis may be.

Dr. Lucas, these are no longer a child's measurements, the daughter says, blushing. Miss Lucas must be nearly twelve years in age now—

Thirteen, Mateo says quickly.

—yes, thirteen, the daughter agrees, and she is not a little girl anymore. She is a woman.

Of course, the widow interjects, we could make a special order, if you like, Dr. Lucas—

—but Miss Lucas might prefer to have something from a grown lady's clothier. We could recommend one to you, if you like. There is a certain shop that caters to all the most eligible young women in Queens.

Mateo accepts the recommendation and tips the widow and her daughter well for their help, but as he goes away from their shop, he can't help but feel that he may have inadvertently left something behind him.

When Mateo returns to the bachelor cottage empty-handed later in the evening, he pauses in the parlor to watch Santana at the piano.

Mateo knew, of course, that Santana had grown an inch taller over the summer. What he hadn't noticed until tonight were the other, subtler ways in which Santana has changed of late—how her face has thinned and her curls softened into waves, how her movements have become more cursive, her angles sharper in some places and more rounded in others.

Santana resembles Alma more closely than ever now; she is the near-image of the young bride in the 1848 daguerreotype hidden away in a secret drawer at Mateo's childhood home.

More than anything, Santana seems different in bearing. Many years have passed since she last played with her dolls or snuck inside Alma's walk-in closet to try on costume clothing. Nowadays, she is more somber than ever and spends her afternoons sitting, feline, in the bay window with her books. Sometimes, she is moody, annoyed with minutiae. Other times, she seems sad almost down to her bones.

While Santana was always a sober child, she has become increasingly contemplative over the last several years. She has set into herself, transforming into something less haphazard and more deliberate than she had ever been before. She almost never runs about the bachelor cottage or makes mischief anymore.

Mateo supposes that every father must one day realize that his child has grown up somehow without his noticing.

What he didn't anticipate was the wondering—the questions in his heart about how well he knows his daughter or if he has ever truly known her at all.

So much of growing up in her case has to do with growing sad.

How had Mateo not noticed her smile becoming rarer? Are smiles so much harder to measure than inches? Somehow he doesn't think that shopping at a new clothier will make this change any easier to bear.

* * *

Nowadays, Mateo seldom holds regular school lessons with Santana. Rather, he brings her books on topics that interest her, acting more as a currier for her than a professor. Sometimes he will discuss her readings with her or check up on her progress in mathematics or geography, but, for the most part, he allows her to direct her own course of study.

It always delights him to see how quickly and well Santana learns.

If Mateo and Santana lived in a better world, he could begin making arrangements for her to attend an institution of higher learning soon.

Fowler, Wright, and Stewart all have sons either already attending or eventually pledged to matriculate at universities, and other members of the medical college faculty have even sent their daughters to women's colleges and academies.

It is the 1890s now, a time for forward motion.

It is not so unusual in this decade for women to attend school.

Mateo has met many of his colleagues' children, both the sons and the daughters, and knows that they are not half as intelligent as his Santana, though some of them are much older than she.

Though Mateo has learned by now that Santana is most capable of educating herself, it nevertheless vexes him that she cannot enjoy certain of the more particular benefits that come of pursuing studies outside the home.

Mateo looks back on his own days at Columbia College with great fondness, for it was there that he first made Fowler and Stewart's acquaintances and learned to comport himself in the company of many persons of his same age.

It would be his fondest wish that one day Santana might find herself surrounded by many peers and friends with whom she could not only work and learn but also make merry and divert herself.

In the back of his mind, Mateo knows that there are certain institutions in the South, normal schools and seminaries, designated especially for young ladies of Negro descent, and wonders if Santana might like to enroll at one of them one day.

Even so, there is also part of Mateo that knows that Santana doesn't belong at such a place—that he has already educated her beyond what she might learn there. He rankles to think that Santana should be shunted into a corner simply because she cannot seem to fit in where people suppose that she ought to.

Bonnie could only barely write her own name and read numerals when called upon to do so, but she was much more naturally intelligent than Mateo.

She could teach herself to do anything if given both the time and direction to acquire the skill.

Why shouldn't Bonnie have been able to attend school, if she had wanted to? Why shouldn't Santana be able to?

Sometimes Mateo lies abed at night, grinding his teeth and wondering if the world isn't such a backward place only because those in authority will not permit the persons most qualified to turn it about the opportunity try their hands at doing so.

* * *

**Spanish translations:**

_**El trabajo compartido es más llevadero. No dejes para mañana lo que puedas hacer hoy. ¿Me estás escuchando, Santana? ¡Más rápido! : Sharing work makes it lighter. Do not leave for tomorrow what you can do today. Are you listening, Santana? Faster!**_

_**En sombra está/ sin morir, muriendo hoy/ y mañana sin cesar/ ni reir ni gozar : In shadow it is/ without dying, dying today/ and tomorrow without cease, as well/ neither laughter nor joy—which are lyrics from the song "Maldito Amor" (or "Damned Love") by famous Puerto Rican composer Juan Morel Campos.**_

_**¡Santana! ¡Ven a mí! : Santana! Come to me!**_

_**Te damos gracias, Señor, por estos alimentos que de Tu bondad vamos a tomar. Haz que renovadas nuestras fuerzas, Te sirvamos siempre con alegría : We thank Thee, Lord, for these foods that You in your kindness gave to us to eat. Repair our strength, and we will always serve You with great joy**_

_**El Diablo lo hizo : The Devil made it**_

_**Ésta es la música. Tu abuelo y yo solíamos bailar a esta canción cuando vivíamos en la ciudad : This is music. Your grandfather and I used to dance to this song when we lived in the city**_

_**Y **__**é**__**ste es un payaso divertido : And this one is a funny clown**_


	3. Young Miss Lopez

**Part III: Young Miss Lopez**

Santana is seventeen years old, and it is summertime. The city seethes with heat and bustles with traffic, horse carriages and street vendors everywhere. Mateo arrives home early to the bachelor cottage after working at the hospital, a Grolier copy of Night and Morning by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in hand. After doffing his shoes and sack coat in the foyer, he calls into the parlor.

Summer peach, I brought you your novel! Do you have the old one for me? I can return it to the club tomorrow.

When Mateo hears footsteps descending the stairs all in a rush, he expects them to belong to Santana, hurrying to greet him and claim her book. He enters the parlor, anticipating that he will find his daughter there, ready to kiss him on the cheek and chatter to him about her most recent reading. It surprises him to see his mother waiting for him instead.

Alma wears a very grave expression.

Santana is not well, she says in Spanish.

Her words immediately pluck at Mateo's heart seams. Concern, worry, and confusion play through him. Santana had seemed very well last night. She showed no signs of fatigue or illness.

Did Mateo transmit some disease to Santana from the hospital? Is she in pain? Misery? Distress? What medicines does Mateo have in his surgeon's bag that he could use to ease her suffering? If Santana is very ill, Mateo will take her immediately to the Bellevue and murder any man who tries to stand in his way, even the Chair of Surgery himself.

Is she running a fever? Mateo asks Alma, starting for the stairs. You should have sent for me at the hospital—had Bradley run a message. I could have—

Alma sets a firm hand on Mateo's wrist, stopping him before he can bypass her. She shakes her head, terse.

Santana does not want to see you.

Pardon?

She says she does not want to see you, and, for truth, you cannot help her.

Of all the outrageous things that Alma has said to Mateo over the years, this latest statement is perhaps the most difficult for him to comprehend. On the rare occasions when Santana contracted chest colds and agues in her childhood, she always wanted Mateo to attend to her and cried for him until he came to sit at her bedside. Why wouldn't she want to see him now? Is she not ill? Is he not a physician? Is he not her papa?

Alma pulls Mateo in close. She wears an urgent, furtive expression, like she is about to tell him something that she can only bear to say aloud once.

The girl feels embarrassed, she hisses, tugging Mateo down so that his face parallels her own. It is a women's matter and nothing to do with a surgeon. She will feel better by tomorrow, but tonight she must remain abed.

Suddenly, Mateo feels disinclined to race upstairs to Santana's bedroom.

I see, he says. I suppose she might still like her book?

She might, Alma agrees, taking it from him.

Alma feeds Mateo supper but then shoos him from the house almost immediately after the meal, arguing that Santana needs her sleep and that there is no sense in Mateo dawdling about on a night when his daughter cannot see him.

The sun still soars high and bright in the sky as Mateo steps out onto the street.

It is only half-past six o'clock.

Standing on the front stoop, Mateo folds the newspaper he usually would have read while smoking his pipe in the parlor after supper in half and tucks it into the outside pocket of his bag.

But then he sees it.

The newspaper heading.

Suddenly, he realizes the date.

Today would have been Bonnie's thirty-fourth birthday.

After leaving the bachelor cottage so abruptly, Mateo had intended to spend the remainder of his evening at the Grolier Club. Now that seems like a foolish idea. Without thinking, Mateo snatches one of the roses from his mother's bushes. He carries it with him all the way to Park Avenue, where he quickly hails a hack. Promising the driver a sizeable tip, he asks to go to Woodlawn.

In the Bronx, please, he clarifies.

The hack driver raises an eyebrow at Mateo, but, to his credit, he doesn't dare to ask why a man like Mateo would want to visit such a place. With a shrug of his shoulders, the driver sets his horse to trotting, piloting it through Manhattan and over the Madison Avenue Bridge into the Bronx. Only once the driver halts the hack outside the Woodlawn gates does he turn to look upon Mateo again.

Would you like me to wait for you, sir? he offers.

Mateo shakes his head. No, I can find my own way home, thank you, he replies.

The Woodlawn is not in any way a homely place. Like the Green-Wood, it has its impressive granite mausoleums, spire-capped monuments, and ornate edifices. However, unlike the Green-Wood, it also has its humbler corners, and it is in one such corner that Mateo finds Bonnie.

It shouldn't scrape Mateo's heart so much to see that Bonnie's gravestone bears her maiden name, but it does. After all, Mateo and Bonnie never legally married, so she never legally became a Lopez. Even if they had married, maybe she would have been a Lucas anyway.

Perhaps the whole thing is just cleaner this way.

Bonnie Sarah Brown, 1862 to 1881.

Her final rest makes no mention of her relationship to Mateo or of their daughter Santana. It does not call her Beloved Wife or Cherished Mother. An unwitting passerby looking at the gravestone might never suppose that woman buried under it had been the core and keel to a family—that she had been someone so special. Given her still tender years at the time of her death, they might suppose her a mere child.

Mateo suddenly feels very sorry that he has never come to visit Bonnie in Woodlawn before now.

Of course, Mateo is a scientist. It is not his habit to believe in that for which he has no evidence, so he does not deem that Bonnie is in some heaven or that she could hear him if he talked to her right now. His purpose in this visit was to devote real time to honoring all that remains of Bonnie—namely, his own memories of her—so that is precisely what he does.

He sits down on the grass in front of her stone and remembers.

Though Mateo had meant to set the rose he plucked from the garden on Bonnie's gravestone, he finds that it withered on the hack ride from Park Avenue. Rather than defaming Bonnie's plot with an asphyxiated stem and dying bloom, Mateo dismantles the rose as he sits, scattering petals upon the grass over the earth where Bonnie rests.

By now, the sun has reached its brightest bright. It prepares to set over the horizon but has not begun to do so yet. Long shadows fall down from the crosses and cairns, spilling over the ground like wine from overturned goblets. The people who see Mateo look at him with wondering eyes, both because he is in a part of the cemetery where they would not expect to see someone like him and because he is a grown man, playing a game with a flower.

He doesn't need to count out petals to know that Bonnie loved him, though.

Without making the conscious decision to do so, Mateo starts to imagine what life might have been like if Bonnie had survived her illness and lived to this day.

Though he had wanted more than one child with Bonnie before Bonnie died, at present, Mateo's daydream features just him and Bonnie and Santana and Alma, a whole, single family. Mateo pictures Alma and Santana in the kitchen, tut-tutting Bonnie every time she tries to join them there. They're preparing some food. Bonnie wants to help them, but it is Bonnie's birthday, so she must not.

In Mateo's daydream, Alma has come around to Bonnie, just like she came around to Santana. Alma enjoys Bonnie now and acknowledges her, even enough to playfully tease her through a thick Boricuan accent.

No, no! You stay away!

Santana chimes in. Not yet, Mama! You'll spoil it!

Since the surprise is not for him, Mateo wanders into the kitchen to see Santana mixing batter while Alma warms the oven. He imagines the smell of ginger in the air, the hint of sweetness—the first telltale evidences of Bonnie's old favorite dessert—vivid across the kitchen.

Mateo's imagination skips scenes, skimming along until he and his family gather around the table in the dining room, sharing gingerbread cake. Bonnie sits at Mateo's side and Santana at Bonnie's, while Alma beams from the end of the table.

Are you sure you like it, Mama? Santana asks, hating, in her typical way, to think that she may have displeased a person whom she loves.

You did everything perfect, peach, Bonnie tells Santana, rubbing a thumb along her daughter's jaw, smiling at her daughter's self-consciousness.

Mateo knows most certainly that Bonnie would have been so proud of Santana—that she would have adored Santana as much as Mateo does and felt honored and grateful to be Santana's parent, as does he. Perhaps if Bonnie were still alive, Santana might not be so somber all the time. Maybe she would have learned to smile more, to laugh as freely as her mother always did.

For as much as Mateo's heart aches for missing Bonnie, it aches even more for what she's missing—for the thought of Santana missing her.

Santana doesn't realize what a perfect angel her mother was, and Mateo has failed to explain the details to Santana because he has found it too difficult to speak of precious things.

By now, Mateo has dropped the last petals onto Bonnie's plot. He wonders if Bonnie could ever forgive him for the gulf that exists between her life's legacy and her very living daughter, who knows next to nothing concerning her. For an instant, Mateo contemplates sitting Santana down to talk about Bonnie as soon as he is able, but then he realizes that so many years have passed that he doesn't know what he would say.

It is an old sin, but his heart still feels raw.

What if Santana doesn't want to hear his old stories? What if she doesn't care as much as he would need her to care? What if she acts flippant or removed? Worse yet, what if she feels angry with him for withholding information for so long? What if she resents his silence?

It is a strange thing for Mateo to admit his fear to himself. For such a reckless man as he, the feeling is almost new. Mateo doesn't think that he could stand it if Santana were to tell him that he had wronged her. Those words would cut through his heart seams, clean like scissors.

He is forty-four years old, and it is summertime, and he is scared of ghosts.

* * *

Mateo and Stewart linger in the club hall following the meeting, drinking too much brandy.

Daphne asked me for a divorce, Stewart says, just as casually as if he were making a comment on a sporting event's outcome. He swallows a swig of liquor and grimaces. She happened upon me dallying with her sister. I forgot to lock the door. The other children are all grown now, but she has asked me to relinquish her custody of little Maude.

Will you grant her the divorce? Mateo asks, shocked.

Stewart barks out a bitter laugh. I suppose I will, he says. I probably had it coming to me. Probably brought it upon myself, didn't I? I shan't keep her if she doesn't want me. God knows I want her, though. Of course, I do. She thinks I don't.

He takes another long swig from his drink, swishes the amber contents of his glass, and grimaces again.

Sometimes I think, he says, clapping Mateo on the shoulder, that you had the right idea, old dog, never marrying, never having children.

Stewart mulls his thoughts for a moment more, staring off into the library, focusing on something beyond the books on the shelves, on something much more distant. When he speaks again, there is a tightness in his voice.

When a man keeps to himself, his heart doesn't snag on things. I will miss little Maude a lot.

I suppose you will, Mateo says.

* * *

When his oldest son graduates from university, Fowler takes the young man with him to France on holiday. They travel by ocean steam liner and enjoy several weeks touring Paris and its surrounding countryside. Upon their return to the States, Fowler discusses the peculiarities of the Europeans over drinks with his fellow surgeons at the Grolier Club.

They are very queer, he says, —so open in some ways and so closed off in others.

Since moving to New York City from Puerto Rico as an infant, Mateo has never traveled outside the United States at all. However, he has always harbored an aspiration to see Europe. With Santana growing ever older, Mateo begins to wonder if he oughtn't to maybe take her on a tour overseas with him. He certainly possesses the means to afford a transatlantic voyage.

They could visit Spain, his father's native land.

There are so many Spanish songs that laud dark girls with dark eyes, after all. Spain might be the one place in the world where people could see Santana for what she truly is: the well-born, well-educated, highly accomplished daughter of a wealthy surgeon, beautiful and refined, a rare treasure. No one would give more than two thoughts to her complexion. She could socialize and attend events—balls, operas, galas, parties.

Though Mateo seldom allows himself to contemplate the notion of an eventual marriage for Santana, some part of him supposes that if he and Santana were in Madrid and she happened to meet a young gentleman who treated her well and clearly adored her, it would not entirely vex him if she were to make an engagement.

He has read that Spanish brides marry in gowns of black silk.

Of course, Santana's secondhand Boricua Spanish, though fluent, would sound rustic and nasal to the urban Iberian ear. Her American manners would immediately mark her as different from any European peers she might meet. All the same, Mateo cannot help but cling to the hope that life might be the better for Santana in Spain—that she wouldn't have to remain in such deep hiding there, at least.

Winter sets in not long after Fowler returns to New York from France, and Mateo knows that he must weather the season before he can book passage for himself and Santana to Spain and make a voyage. In the springtime, he will investigate the cost of tickets and begin to devise an itinerary. He will speak with Santana about Madrid. He will see.

In the meantime, he keeps his secret hope in his heart.

Everything will be better in Spain.

Someday Santana will wear a gown in black and wed someone who learns and cherishes her every innumerable grace.

* * *

Mondays are laundry days at the bachelor cottage, and Mateo arrives home on Monday night to find that Santana and Alma have exhausted themselves with their work. Both women yawn through supper, and Alma retires to bed not long after the meal, citing indigestion, while Santana retreats to the parlor almost immediately with her book, quiet as she usually is whenever she feels tired. Mateo remains in the dining room, sipping coffee. The clock on the wall ticks noisily, but everything else in the house falls into a sleepy silence.

Mateo takes a long while to drain his cup and then clears it, emptied, to the kitchen sink. He spies the culprit washtub propped on its side, drying in the corner.

Santana, my love? he calls, entering the parlor room.

He discovers her laid out upon the sofa couch, her book fallen to the floor, and her body curled, knees to belly, ankles crossed, hands set beneath her ear for a pillow. She dozes, eyes closed, oblivious to the first violet twilight of evening pouring through the bay window.

For the first time in a long while, it strikes Mateo how very small Santana is and how very dainty, though she is mostly grown. All at once, he feels immensely tender toward her—and particularly when he sees her start to shiver where she sleeps. He glances around the room, searching for a blanket. He finds none, and neither anything else to set over her at all.

Santana, he says softly, crouching down beside the sofa couch. He sets a hand upon her shoulder, stirring her. Would you like to go upstairs to your room? You will be warmer under a quilt.

Santana makes a pouting face, her eyes still closed, and gives the vaguest nod. However, she does not rise or make any motion to vacate the sofa couch. She remains in her position, still curled into her little ball.

Mateo smirks. Santana, my angel, he says, a bit louder than before, I cannot carry you upstairs—not anymore. You will have to walk up there yourself.

Santana's pout deepens, and she makes a grumbling noise in protest. She still does not open her eyes but removes her hands from under her ear, shifting them down so that she can tuck them between her knees, tangling them in her skirt for warmth.

Mateo smells laundry soap and bluing agent on her skin. He sees the stitch in her brow, telling him that she sleeps in earnest and has fully committed herself to her rest. She will not wake either easily or soon.

As it must be, then, Mateo says, pressing a quick kiss to Santana's brow and rising. He leaves her, momentarily, going into the foyer to fetch his overcoat, and then returns to drape the coat over her, covering her body from shoulders to feet. He makes certain to tuck the coat in around her edges, not wanting her to catch a draft while she dreams.

Finally, he rescues her book from the floor and sets it where she will find it upon the end table in the morning.

It is The Pursuit of the House-Boat by John Kendrick Bangs.

Sleep well, Mateo bids Santana, though she cannot comprehend him.

He leaves the house in just his suit jacket, ignoring the September chill.

* * *

It startles Mateo to find a man waiting outside his office door, and particularly before sunrise. Mateo pauses, keys dangling loosely from his fingertips. Usually, patients don't arrive at Mateo's practice before he does. The man leans against the doorframe, just a few feet from where Mateo stands. As soon as he becomes aware of Mateo's presence, he perks up at once, doffing his hat.

He is a shadow when he speaks.

Dr. Lucas? he says. Dr. M.J. Lucas? There is a boy, most gravely injured. You must come with me at once.

Though the man makes his imploration at a whisper, his voice carries, deep and urgent. Mateo cannot fully see him through the darkness but can perceive the sheen in the whites of his eyes. The man is shorter than Mateo but very broad in stature. His movements are quick and tight. As the man steps into the moonbeams lilting through the only window on the hallway, Mateo sees that he is very finely dressed, with gold cufflinks and a jeweled pin in his Ascot.

We must send for one of the Bellevue ambulances, Mateo says, capturing the man's urgency for himself. We must get him to the hospital as soon as possible. What is his injury?

No! the man protests, volume rising. He steps forward, grabbing Mateo by the arm, beseeching Mateo by both touch and word. The hospital would not admit him! He would not be... permitted. You must see him—you must see him here, in your office, this morning.

Mateo furrows his brow. What do you mean when you say that the hospital would not admit him?

I mean that his kind is not allowed there.

I see.

It is curious that a man so finely arrayed would associate himself with the type of person that a hospital would turn away—or at least it would be curious to anyone except for Mateo.

Maybe the injured boy is the man's servant, but maybe the injured boy is something else.

The man seems to intuit Mateo's thoughts.

He is under my employ, the man says. I am the proprietor of a traveling circus. He is my fire-eater. He burned his leg quite severely during the course of his act. Please, you must administer to him, you must do something. You mustn't let him die.

The man's fingers close around the woolen sleeve of Mateo's overcoat. He clutches at it as though he were but a child and it his comfort quilt. The moonlight reflects fear in his eyes.

Please.

Mateo finds himself following the man down the stairs to the street, his surgeon's bag held firm in hand, his keys yet unused, returned to his coat pocket. Late September cold and darkness turn Mateo's breath to fog as soon as he steps onto the sidewalk outside the door. Streetlamps flood East 32nd Street with light just beyond the shadows from the buildings. Though Mateo had expected to find some sign of the injured boy outside, he does not.

There is nothing and no one on the streets.

This way, the man gestures, beckoning Mateo down the sidewalk and into the alley which separates Mateo's building from the one beside it.

A handsome, black stagecoach occupies that narrow lane, facing in the direction of East 33rd Street. Though Mateo cannot see the horses attached to the stagecoach from where he stands, he can hear them panting, breathing deep-lunged breaths. A driver waits at the side of the stagecoach, his hat in his hands. He is portly and balding, dressed in work clothes—not a professional driver, like the New York cabbies.

Mr. Adams, sir, I think he's getting worse, the driver splutters.

Within the next minute, the driver and Adams have opened the vehicle's door and pushed Mateo forward so that he might see the injured boy languishing inside the coach. In truth, it is almost too dark in the alleyway for Mateo to make out anything clearly, and especially in a space both so shrouded and confined. It is only by the faintest moonlight that Mateo can perceive the human form laid out over the bench.

The smell of acrid roast meat permeates the air.

Mateo perceives movement through the blackness and hears a pained groan.

Mr. Adams? says an addled voice. I can go back, sir. We gotta go back. We're gonna miss. We'll miss the train. Rachel will be so sore. You'll tell her I didn't mean it, won't you?

Do you have a lamp? Mateo asks the driver. Light it, and bring it to me so that I can examine him.

The driver nods and scuttles toward the front of the stagecoach, hoisting himself up onto the jockey box with a grunt. Mateo rounds on Adams.

How long ago did the boy sustain the burn? I fear he may be experiencing cardiac shock.

It was last night at our evening performance, Adams says. The gypsies come on stage at a quarter hour past eight o'clock, and Noah caught fire just at the finale of their act. We tried to find a physician in New Brunswick, but there were none who would treat him—none at all. I thought all was lost until my foreman spoke with a railway worker who knew of you. The fellow said that you had treated his sister when she had a breech baby, though she was a Negro. We came here right away by coach, but it is forty miles. Our travels took us most of the night. Please, won't you do something for Noah? Please, won't you?

At that instant, the driver manages to ignite a lamp, bringing some small light to the alley. Suddenly, Mateo can see Adams' face in sharp relief, reds ruddying its rounds and shadows obscuring its recesses in stark chiaroscuro. Mateo can also see into the coach cabin somewhat for the first time.

The boy lying upon the bench must be Santana's age or thereabouts.

Even supine and in pain, he cuts an impressive figure. His build is burly, and he is clad in his circus show costume—knickers and a silver velveteen vest, embellished with bold violet and gold threads. He wears red sashes tied at his waist and no shoes upon his feet. Though he faces away from Mateo, with his head opposite the open coach door, his hurt is nevertheless obvious, even with his face out of view. All his muscles tense.

He is lighter in complexion than Alma but darker than Mateo.

His right leg hangs over the side of the bench, bearing his injury. Despite the dim lamplight, Mateo can see the severity of the burn at once. Blistered, erythematic flesh and white-ringed char peel from the boy's calf. The boy's skin is depilated, shiny, and sports an awful hematoma. Blood has welled to the surface of the injury, as has black. The burn is of the fourth degree.

I cannot help him here, Mateo declares. We must take him to the hospital. He must have surgery. My colleagues there will treat him. He can pass.

Adams shakes his head. A frantic, wild something sparks behind his eyes. He is a Jew, he protests. They will not see him.

They will not know the truth, Mateo counters, unless you tell it to them.

They will know when they undress him! Adams roars. Name your price, and I will meet it! Please do not let my—! Please do not allow him to die!

Mateo tries to keep an even voice. It is important for a physician to remain levelheaded, even when his patient or those who have responsibility for the patient do not do the same. Mateo sets a hand upon Adams' arm, soothing him.

I cannot help Noah here, Mateo says. He requires surgery. I do not have the equipment to perform surgery at my office.

Then bring the equipment here from your hospital, Adams begs. Even if your colleagues consent to treat him, they will not provide him their best care once they know the truth. You will, though. You are fair. Bring the equipment to your office. Bring it here, and I will pay whatever expenses you encounter. Just say you'll help him. Please. He is—

Tears gather in Adams' eyes, shiny against the lamplight. He swallows, hard, and grips Mateo's coat jacket more firmly than he did before. His voice is a strangled whisper.

He is like a son to me. He is like my own son.

Adams enters his plea with such contrition that Mateo cannot help but wonder if Adams, like himself, is a man who has a secret.

Mateo's heart seams loosen.

Over the last eighteen years, Mateo has from time to time wondered what he would do if Santana were ever gravely ill or hurt and required medical care beyond what he could provide for her himself at the bachelor cottage. He has wondered what would happen if he were to importune Stewart, Fowler, or Wright for their help in making her well. Would they assist him? Would they see his girl? If they would not, would Mateo simply have to allow her to die?

Foolish questions, of course.

If Santana were injured as severely as this Noah laid out now upon the bench, Mateo would most certainly travel forty miles by night in a rambling stagecoach to find help for her. He would most certainly seek out a physician whom he had never before met on her behalf. He would undoubtedly beg until the physician agreed to give Santana aid. He would pay everything he had to save her, and he would not accept any demurral from the physician.

Mateo has known these things in his heart since he first held Santana in his arms, seven minutes after her birth. He has known them even more surely ever since Bonnie died.

It is not that Mateo doesn't want to help Adams' poor, injured boy.

Noah lets out another groan from inside the coach, and Adams winces.

There is a certain nurse who could perhaps assist me, Mateo mutters, thinking.

* * *

Over the course of the next hour, Mateo, Adams, and the coach driver—Burt—carry Noah up the stairs to Mateo's office and make him comfortable in the examination room. Mateo administers preliminary treatment to Noah to the best of his abilities, propping up both of Noah's feet on a pillow and cleaning and dressing the wounds along Noah's burn site.

For his part, Noah remains mostly quiet throughout his treatment, having receded into a state of semi-consciousness, but at one point, he cries out, Doc, don't take my leg!

Adams gapes at Mateo, worried, from the corner of the room. You won't have to amputate, will you? You won't cripple him? he asks.

Mateo ignores the question, adjusting Noah upon the examination table. Help me move his shoulders, he mutters to Burt, who stands across from him.

Adams remains in Mateo's office with Noah, tending to the boy and keeping him quiet, while Burt conveys Mateo to the Bellevue in the stagecoach. It is a quarter hour to six o'clock in the morning, and the sun rises over the Waldorf-Astoria on 5th Avenue and 35th Street in the distance. Autumnal gold gilds the city as Mateo sees it through the coach window. Tremulous light flitters upon awnings and filigree.

Mateo enters the great entrance hall to the hospital to the usual greetings.

Good morning, Dr. Lucas!

How do you do, Matthew?

No one has any reason to suspect Mateo of doing something illicit, and yet his underarms begin to sweat and his pulse throbs in his ears, as though he stood accused. He tries not to meet anyone's eyes as he hurries towards his destined ward. How foolish it is, he thinks in passing, that a physician should have so much to fear simply because he desires to administer treatment to a particular patient.

Did he not make a solemn oath? Has he not an obligation?

When Stewart spots Mateo in the hallway to the surgical ward, he asks Mateo, jokingly, what has induced him to visit the Bellevue so very early in the morning on a day when he could have worked at his office instead.

I only forgot some paperwork.

A lie.

I intend to return to my office once I have everything in order.

The truth.

In the ensuing hours, Mateo steals away into the less-trafficked corners of the hospital. He hides out in long silences, in spaces filled with honeyed light and wafting dust motes, in wards closed or with low patient populations. He waits until his colleagues turn their eyes from him. He reminds himself to breathe.

And then he does as he must.

Though Mateo is a liar, he had never been a thief until today.

Now he pilfers the materials that he requires from various stock closets, concealing them in the depths of his leather bag, wrapping the ointment bottles in gauze so that they won't jostle when he moves, hiding the shears and scalpels in amongst his more basic tools.

He attempts to be both judicious and discreet, requisitioning no more than what he most essentially requires: gauze and eucalyptus ointment, salicylic wool and sublimate solution, Condy's fluid and sterilized catgut, turpentine, sponges, a broad-blade razor, forceps, and boracic lotion. He only takes from supply drawers which have already somewhat depleted of their stock and waits until he is alone to gather the stolen items into his surgeon's bag.

It is a lucky thing, Mateo supposes, that he is now part of the medical school faculty, for his position affords him access to inventory lists and supply order forms and allows him to make changes to them as he will. His hand reduces twenty sponges to fifteen, one-hundred spools of wool to ten. He juggles numbers as though he were the person who worked at the circus rather than Noah on the table or Adams in such splendid clothes.

The bell at Our Lady of the Scapular tolls one o'clock in the afternoon by the time Mateo has gathered all the materials required for the surgery.

Mateo has but one more necessity to acquire.

* * *

Perhaps it is strange that Mateo and the nurse have not spoken to each other in private since that day at Mateo's office nearly fourteen years ago, but perhaps it also makes good sense that they have not, for Mateo had the nurse's word that she would never reveal his secret, and sometimes it is easiest to keep secrets between two people in silence.

It certainly isn't silent as Mateo conducts his search for the nurse, casing the hospital, checking at the nurse's station and various hallways for her. Everything seems too loud, too quick, too bright, too important. All of Mateo's arrangements will come to naught if he cannot manage to find the nurse or if she declines his request, even after he finds her.

He discovers her on the surgical recovery ward, instructing a student nurse concerning to how to change a sterile dressing over a wound. When she first sees him, she startles, just like she did when he approached her and her nanny on the stairs outside the hospital, asking if they could use his help, all those years ago.

Mateo beckons for her to rise and follow him, but she doesn't comply with his summons immediately. Instead, she eyes him, wary, and bites her lip, concerned. She waits another few seconds, leaving her student with some final instruction before finally going over to meet Mateo by the door at last.

Is something the matter, Doctor? she asks, furtive.

Mateo shakes his head no, quieting her until they step off the ward, closing the door behind them. They stop in a flare of sunlight under a wide window. The hallway is empty and echolalic around them.

I hope not, Mateo says. I hope nothing will be the matter.

He draws a sharp breath, expanding his lungs, his courage.

There is a man who cares very much for a boy, he starts. The boy is like family to him. The boy is grievously injured, and he requires my help. I require yours. I could pay you—

You mean at your office? the nurse interrupts, apprehending Mateo's meaning.

Yes, Mateo says. At my office—like with Matilda.

I see, says the nurse.

She hesitates, wetting her lips with the pink tip of her tongue between her teeth. When she next speaks, she does so in a voice barely louder than a breath. Her eyes dart, tracing over the sunlight glare that reflects upon the floor, not daring to look at Mateo.

Will he die without your help?

Mateo answers honestly.

Yes, I believe he will.

They make their arrangements.

The nurse will arrive at Mateo's office via hack by no later than five o'clock in the evening, following her hospital shift. She will tell no one where she is going or what she intends to do. She will not wear her hospital uniform to Mateo's building. She will make herself available to attend the multiple operations necessary for the boy's full course of recovery. Once she has finished offering her help to Mateo, she will never speak of what they have done to anyone again. Mateo offers to pay her if she likes, but she declines.

No, no, it's charity, she says. A good turn.

The nurse starts to go away—to part ways from Mateo in the hall—but pauses just before she reaches the doorway. Something seems to snag in her. After a second's thought, she looks over her shoulder, back toward Mateo. There is a hushed kind of fear in her eyes, rabbit and tentative. The nurse draws a breath.

Doctor, she asks, hesitant. Tell me. I must... I must... What is he?

Mateo knows what the nurse really means to ask, of course, but the old recalcitrance in him will not allow him to answer that question. He stares at the nurse, unyielding.

He is a boy, he says firmly. A circus worker. He breathes fire at the circus.

The nurse shakes her head. No, she corrects. I mean—her eyes dart to the left, once quickly, and then back to Mateo's face—I mean, what blood does he have?

Red, Mateo says, resolute.

The nurse still feels afraid. She wants to know if this boy whom she has consented to help is like her nanny, Matilda—if he is like something familiar to her. It is a deeply human impulse to feel most comfortable with those things that we already know well, even if it is also a selfish one. The nurse's fear comes from ignorance. Her willingness to help anyhow comes from something better than that, something more ideal. She had already consented to help the boy before she asked her questions. How few of those souls in Plato's cave will step out into the sun without asking what it burns like first.

Mateo softens. He is not so very dark, he says softly, but he is not a Christian... and I am not a Christian, either.

The nurse pauses, wets her lips again. Neither was my husband, she says.

Both Mateo and the nurse nod, sharing in understanding.

I will see you at five o'clock.

Yes. I will see you then.

* * *

Mateo explains the proceedings to Adams: Noah will require not just one round of surgery but several, and the procedures will prove very painful. There exists a great potential for complication—the skin grafts might not take or Noah's blood might become infected. Adams and Burt will have to help hold Noah down upon the table while Mateo makes his incisions and the nurse handles Mateo's implements.

Should the chloroform wear off during the surgery, you will have to bodily restrain him, Mateo warns.

Anything, Adams promises. I'll do anything as long as you'll save him.

I hope that I can save him, Mateo tells Adams honestly.

When the nurse arrives at Mateo's office promptly at five o'clock, Mateo does not bother to introduce her by name to Adams and Burt, and neither does he bother to introduce them by name to her. No one protests at the impropriety. Everyone seems to understand that they are about to do something in a hush and in a shadow.

Earlier in the day, Mateo had already debrided Noah's wounds using saline solution, tweezers, and antiseptic. Now he uncovers the burns, peeling back the bandages. Adams, Burt, and the nurse all cringe as one at both the smell and the sight.

Noah had been mostly unconscious until Mateo revealed his injury to the air. Now his eyes open, dark and wide, and he yelps and writhes, animal. Doc, not my leg! he slurs. Don't! No!

Adams and Burt spring into action at once, seizing upon Noah and pinning him down upon the table, with Adams holding his arms and Burt his feet. They gape at Mateo, alarmed, and he realizes that he must keep calm for their sakes and for Noah's.

The chloroform, Nurse, Mateo says, waiting for her to suffuse a small handkerchief spread over a metal frame with the chemical, to pass it to him so that he can hold it over Noah's mouth and count the boy to sleep.

The nurse meets Mateo's eyes over the table.

At the hospital, they administer anesthesia through a tube of India rubber attached to a mask. They have pumps and gauges, Clover's apparatus, and nitrous oxide. What crude mockup of surgery will they perform here in this crowded room?

Mateo wills the nurse not to say anything that might upset Adams and Burt, holding his gaze steadily to hers.

Right away, Doctor, the nurse says.

Mateo nods, accepting the chloroformed frame as she hands it to him. Noah wails, and Mateo wonders if his landlord and neighbors will hear the racket through the walls. No matter, for Mateo will end the racket soon enough. He tries not to look into Noah's eyes as he presses the handkerchief to Noah's mouth. He tries not to watch as the boy tenses, veins bulging at his neck and in his arms, twitching once, before finally softening. Mateo tries not to look at anyone, passing the frame off to Adams so that he can hold it in place.

Keep a steady drip of chloroform going through the cloth, Mateo warns, gesturing for the nurse to pass Adams the bottle. He shan't feel what we're about as long as you keep him under. Hold it just a few inches from his face. Yes, that's right.

Adams nods, helpless.

You grab his feet, just in case, Mateo instructs Burt, and Burt nods, helpless, too.

Are you ready, Doctor? the nurse asks.

I am, and you?

I am.

For a fleeting instant, Mateo imagines himself in Adams' place—how he might feel if he were to watch his child helpless upon the table. His heart seams give a mighty tug, as though they were liable to rip.

Nurse, the razor, please, he says.

* * *

Mateo arrives at the bachelor cottage after nine o'clock in the evening, feeling as tired as if he had gone a whole day already without sleep. His mother and daughter wait for him with all the parlor lights on. When they hear him in the foyer, they rush to his side, lively with questions and wearing fear, dark, in their eyes.

Papa, what kept you? We were so worried. You weren't at the club, were you?

¿Sabes qué hora es? ¿Cómo puedes tardar tanto, con Santana en espera? ¿Te asaltaron?

I am sorry, Santana. Lo siento, Mama, Mateo says, setting down his bag and freeing himself from his shoes and the hardship they pose to his feet. I have been occupied in surgery.

At this hour? Why would the hospital schedule your work so late?

Not at the hospital, he admits. There was a man who came to me at my office, bringing his boy. I had to help them, as I could. Please forgive my lateness. I don't suppose there's any supper left? I don't mind if it is cold.

Alma makes a scoffing noise, rolls her eyes, and throws up her hands, exasperated with Mateo's nonchalance. Anyone who did not know her well would suppose that she might have preferred it had her son suffered an attack or befallen some manner of adversity that would better account for his late arrival home. She bustles away into the kitchen, muttering in rapid Spanish to herself.

Por supuesto, la cena está fría. Hace horas que la preparé. Pero la pudiera haber preparado hace días y no te importaría, ¿verdad?, mi chico descuidado.

Mateo grimaces. Only once Alma has gone away does he meet Santana's eyes again.

Is the boy all right, Papa? Santana asks. Did the surgery have a good outcome?

It did, Mateo says, but the boy will require my care for a long while yet. I will have to keep him at my office and tend to him very closely. I suspect I have more late nights ahead of me. Will you forgive me if it comes to that?

Santana smiles, catlike.

Of course, I will, she says, helping Mateo to hang his coat upon its hook.

Her expression turns thoughtful, and she shies like she always does before asking what she supposes might be an imposing question.

Would the boy perhaps like some books to read, while he is cooped up in your office, healing? I haven't so very many old toys that a little boy might like to play with, but I do have some old books that would perhaps suit his tastes. They're in a box under my bed.

It will never cease to surprise Mateo how he can grow to love his daughter more after he had already loved her the most. What a sweet, generous girl she is, even when she has never had anyone to be generous to until today! His heart seams give a mighty tug.

Oh, summer peach, he says gently, so very fond of what she has offered to do that he can scarcely bring himself to decline her. I am afraid that this boy is not so very little. He is your age, maybe a bit older. I should have called him a young man, I'm afraid.

Santana blushes and looks away but recovers quickly.

I see, she says. Well, he still might appreciate a book. I have some novels that a young man might like to read, I think—old Grolier castoffs that you bought for me. Twain and Poe?

Santana, Mateo says even more gently than before. It doesn't seem to me that this boy is lettered. He is not like you. He has probably not had school lessons so very often in his life. He works at a traveling circus, you see.

Santana meets Mateo with a very queer look. At a traveling circus? she repeats, her brow stitching together in confusion, as it so often does whenever she tries to discern if Mateo means to jest with her.

He burnt his leg during his fire-eating act, Mateo clarifies.

I hadn't realized that the circus ever visited New York, Santana says.

I don't think his circus does, Mateo tells her. His employer brought him here from New Jersey. New Jersey hosts the circus, but New York does not. How strange, hm?

Santana giggles at that thought—at the idea of the circus in a place like New Jersey. For a moment, she looks very young and full of wonder. Mateo loves her even more than he did just a second ago, when she offered to give away some of the things she loves the most to a boy whom she has never met. Mateo wants to praise her, to keep her laughing. Somehow, in light of everything that he has seen and done for Noah the circus boy today, it seems more important than ever to Mateo that Santana have every opportunity to laugh.

Just then, Alma gives a shout from the kitchen.

¡Ven! ¡Come! ¡No voy a calentar la comida por tercera vez! she warns.

Santana laughs again and touches at Mateo's elbow. You heard her, Papa, she says in gentle, joking reprimand. Let us go in there now. She will not call for you again.

* * *

Over the course of the next three days, Mateo performs three additional surgeries on Noah with help from the nurse, Adams, and Burt.

Between the surgeries, Mateo attends to his usual duties at the Bellevue and spends his evenings with Santana and Alma at the bachelor cottage.

Even in Mateo's absence, Adams remains at Mateo's office, tending to Noah at all hours of the day and night.

Though no one would suspect it for looking at him, Adams proves to be a surpassingly gentle and adept caretaker for Noah, the vision of patience and affection, pressing wet cloths to the boy's brow to stave off fever and rolling him on the table whenever he experiences discomfort or has need to relieve himself.

While Mateo does not know Adams well, he knows enough to see that Adams blames himself for what happened in New Brunswick. Adams wears darkness almost like bruises under his eyes and scarcely eats, sleeping only fitfully at his bedside vigil, his head rested in his hands.

Whenever Noah cries out in pain, Adams cringes and shouts at Mateo, By God, can't you do something?

In quieter moments, he strokes his thumb over Noah's face and mumbles, That's a good man.

When Noah sleeps, Adams stares, haunted, into the shady corners of the room, watching something that is at once both impossibly faraway and impossibly close.

On his second day at the office, Mateo approaches Adams.

Would you perhaps like to bathe? I live in an apartment just downstairs. I could provide you with some fresh raiment afterwards—a clean shirt, at least. You really ought to have some rest.

Oh, Adams says, startled by the idea.

I will look after Noah for now, Mateo assures him.

Of course, Adams says.

It takes him another long minute to rise.

Burt sleeps outside in the stagecoach, which remains parked in the alleyway, and acts as a courier for Adams and Mateo, going to fetch them food, supplies, and other amenities from around the city. Whenever Adams requires it, Burt sends off and receives telegraphs from the foreman back at the circus. He also transports the nurse to and from Mateo's office, sometimes collecting her upon the stairs to the hospital and sometimes from her home, on East 28th Street.

As for the patient himself, he is seldom lucid. Mateo keeps him drunk on brandy or otherwise sedated and sometimes injects diluted cocaine around his burns and surgical wounds in order to numb them to the pain. On those rare occasions when the boy is both awake and able to speak, he is insensible and says all manner of wild, unfiltered things.

I green-gowned that girl in her pappy's barn. She was so purdy, Doc. The horses watched the whole thing. They got an eyeful. I didn't mean to cry. I'm sorry.

On the third day, Noah's fever finally breaks. On the fourth day, his overall health shows good improvement. The skin around his wounds begins to pink up and soften. Though his injuries are still swollen, they are no longer necrotic. Blood has begun to flow to them, to make them alive again.

Adams becomes jumpier. He paces the length of Mateo's office, chasing his own shadow. A nervous energy seizes him, until he cannot seem to still himself. For the first time since he helped to carry Noah upstairs to Mateo's office from the street, he begins to glance towards the office window and then towards the office door.

Mateo intuits the source of his preoccupation when Burt brings another telegraph from the circus and Adams reads it three and four and five times in a row.

Noah will not die, Mateo says. He will recover, though it remains for us to see how well. If you need to return to your business, I can continue to care for him here in the city. There is a boarding house I know on Hester Street where he could stay during his recuperation. I could visit him there and administer him treatments.

When Adams meets Mateo's eyes, Mateo sees a longing in him—he wants to go—but also a hesitation. Adams hates himself for his eagerness to return to his business, a sentiment which Mateo understands. Adams also carries a deep guilt, vast and personal, from some situation other than the one at hand, a sentiment which Mateo doesn't understand, not knowing all its details.

Adams swallows, hard, the muscles working in his jaw. It takes a long while for him to speak, and, when he does so, he daren't meet Mateo's eyes.

I will leave you two-thousand dollars for his care. If you require more money to cover the expense of the boarding house or the cost of his medicine, wire to me, and I shall send it along, forthwith.

He swallows again, even harder than before.

Noah is a good boy, Doctor.

I'm certain he is, Mateo says.

They make their arrangements. Mateo contacts the owner of the boarding house. Burt conveys Noah to Hester Street in the stagecoach. Burt and Adams say their goodbyes to Noah while Mateo waits outside the door to Noah's room, hands jammed deep in his pockets.

A pair of boarders passes by Mateo in the hallway, making no attempt to hide their curiosity at his presence. He nods to them, pretending that he belongs. They go away down the stairs, speaking in quick, critical Yiddish. Mateo leans his head against the wall. He closes his eyes and sighs.

That night, he brings a loaf of rye bread home to Santana and Alma.

Will your patient have to have any more surgeries? Santana asks, following Mateo into the kitchen.

I don't suppose he will, no, Mateo says, —though it may be a long while yet before he can return to his circus.

Does he mean to return? Santana asks, surprised, perhaps, to think that anyone would want to return to work at a circus after taking a hiatus from doing so. She slips the rye bread from Mateo's grasp, carrying it over to the counter. She draws a knife from the drawer and begins to slice the bread for supper with careful, even motions.

I don't know if he means to return, Mateo says honestly, but his employer means him to do so.

No more late nights for you, though? Santana asks cautiously, trying not to betray her own interest in Mateo resuming his usual schedule.

She is always so quiet about the things that she truly wants.

I certainly hope not, Mateo says. He smirks. Your grandmother won't help us eat any of this bread, I don't think.

Santana smirks back. No, I don't think she will, she agrees.

* * *

Mateo goes to see Noah every day during his lunch hour, changing the boy's bandages, testing his reflexes, and sometimes drawing blood via syringe to see if it will clot. Noah grows stronger and stronger as the days go by. He also becomes increasingly lucid.

As it happens, Noah is actually quite a jovial fellow, keen to speak of his experiences as a traveling performer with the circus. He tells Mateo all about how Mr. Adams took him on when he was only just a lad, rescuing him out from the cold after his own father had abandoned him.

Just as Mateo suspected, Noah is largely uneducated, rough and crude in his manners. Alma would dislike Noah very much, if ever she were to meet him, but Mateo likes him very well. Noah is a particularly charming scoundrel, not unlike Stewart in his character.

You can call me Puck, Doc, Noah tells Mateo one day, as Mateo tests the reflexes in Noah's healing leg. Everyone does.

Puck? Mateo repeats, giving Noah's knee a rap with his Taylor hammer. The boy's knee jerks, as it ought to.

It's short for Puckerman—Noah Puckerman.

He sounds very proud of every part of his name.

Noah—or Puck, as Mateo now calls him—soon grows restless of staying in his bed at every hour and begins to ask Mateo if he might get up and about sometimes. Mateo grants Puck permission to walk about the boarding house but forbids Puck from going outdoors, reminding him that he is not yet strong enough to face the winter chill, in his convalescent condition. Puck agrees to remain inside, though he does complain that he misses looking up to see the sky.

I need my freedom, Puck explains. You don't know how it is, being cooped up all the time.

I don't suppose I do, Mateo agrees.

When Mateo goes home to the bachelor cottage at night, Santana sometimes asks him concerning Puck's progress. She tries to make her questions sound dispassionate and polite. At first, Mateo cannot discern the source of her curiosity regarding the whole proceedings. After all, Santana has never met Puck, and he is just one patient amongst the many patients to whom Mateo tends each day. It takes Mateo a long while to realize that Santana feels jealous of Puck and the fact that Mateo makes special provision to administer to him—that she wishes that Mateo could spend lunchtimes with her rather than at the boarding house.

Does Mr. Puckerman need so very much medicine lately? she asks, clearing Mateo's plate from the table and taking it over to the sink to wash.

Not so much, no, Mateo admits.

Santana quirks an eyebrow. So you go all the way to Hester Street to give him just a sip of tonic? Hester Street is even further away from the hospital than is Gramercy Park, isn't it?

Much further, yes, Mateo confirms.

An expression that Mateo has never seen Santana wear before passes over her face. For a second, she looks very much like Alma, almost haughty, in some way.

Mr. Puckerman is very lucky to be in the care of such a dedicated physician, Santana says softly, beginning to scrub at Mateo's plate in the sudsy water.

When she fully turns her back on him, Mateo lets out a sigh. He doesn't know how to tell Santana that the only reason why he has never taken his lunches at home with her is because he has always known that he would not be able to force himself to leave her company again afterwards to return to work, if he did.

* * *

Between his investment in Puck's progress and his guilt for neglecting Santana, Mateo takes on a ragged appearance—or so he must suppose, considering that Stewart, Fowler, and Wright approach him to voice worry regarding his well-being one day after his shift ends at the hospital.

They ask Mateo to where he disappears every day during his lunch hour, and Mateo responds that he has errands to attend to, matters of estate and business. His friends say that they understand, but they also admit that they believe Mateo has made himself overly busy, as of late.

You must come with us tonight to the Grolier Club, they insist. You are so preoccupied and strange lately. You mustn't be so strange, old dog.

Their good-natured ribbing prevails upon Mateo, though he determines to only remain at the club for an hour or so before returning home to spend his night with Santana.

As Mateo sits at the clubhouse, listening to one of the men play a solo from Beriot upon the violin, Stewart and Wright sidle up to Mateo, Fowler otherwise occupied, deep in conversation with a lawyer and an architect in another room.

Stewart and Wright pass a drink into Mateo's hand. The amber catches on the light.

We have arrived at a concurrence, Wright announces in a whisper, careful not to talk too loudly over the music.

Mateo can already imagine the kind of concurrence that Wright means from the rascally tone in Wright's voice, but he plays along anyhow. Oh? he asks, lifting an eyebrow and taking a sip from his glass. What would that be, gents?

Stewart smiles, hellion.

It would be, he said, that you suffer for lack of womanly comfort in your life.

Before Mateo can protest, Stewart silences him with the wave of a hand and leans in closer, further explaining the thought.

We are well aware that you have very much resigned yourself to a life of perpetual bachelorhood—

Wright cuts in, —and we may even admire you for your resolve—

—but we are in agreement, as is Fowler, Stewart continues, that you would benefit from the particular brand of diversion that a handsome, young woman could offer you. In fact, it is our collective medical opinion that becoming acquainted with a lovely female specimen of eight or nine and ten or even twenty years in age is absolutely expedient for the sake of your good health.

We have recommendations for where you could meet such a specimen, Wright concludes. Consider it a prescription.

Maybe at first, Mateo means to laugh along with the joke, but somehow, when the moment arrives, he finds that he cannot do so. In spite of his intentions, his jaw sets, and he casts his eyes down to his drink. Something tightens in his throat.

Over the years, Mateo's friends have often made sport concerning his seeming aversion to marriage and his disinterest in women, and Mateo has always borne their loving abuses well, allowing them to make merry as they will.

But now that they have made an earnest suggestion that Mateo court a woman—and a young woman, the same age as Santana, at that—Mateo finds himself feeling cornered, like a hunted hart.

He forces himself to take another drink and smile, tipping his glass to his friends.

His smile must come across more as the grimace that he feels inside.

Wright frowns at him. Come now, Matty, he says, setting a hand on Mateo's knee. You haven't anything to fear. You are very wealthy, and my Constance always tells me what a comely fellow you are.

Daphne used to say the same, Stewart avers. Why, if I had looks only half as prepossessing as yours, I might still be a married man!

You might not be, Mateo mutters, shaking his head.

The violin solo draws to a close, and Fowler enters the chamber from the other room, coming over to join his colleagues in their conference. He situates himself over Mateo's shoulder, holding onto the back of Mateo's chair.

How goes the exhortation, boys? he asks Wright and Stewart. Will we make a married man out of our Matthew yet? I have just the pretty little nurse in mind for him.

Enough! Mateo says, standing up most suddenly and to the shock of his friends gathered about him. His drink sloshes in his glass, some spilling over onto his hand, and his heart beats fast within his chest. He feels the old recalcitrance hardening beneath his breastbone.

He knows that his friends mean well enough, but he cannot hear another word from them, not when he had once been married—not when he is still married in his heart.

He cannot tolerate their intrusions tonight.

Now Mateo supposes that he must look wild, for Stewart, Fowler, and Wright retract from him, drawing away to make space where he can stand. They hold their hands in their own laps and wear looks of shock and confusion, unsure as to what provoked Mateo and surprised that they could manage to provoke him at all.

Matty—, says Wright, his shocked confusion changing into concern.

Forgive me, Mateo says, drawing his handkerchief from his pocket to wipe the spilt bourbon from the back of his hand and the cuff of his sleeve. He cleans the glass and sets it on the end table beside his old chair before buttoning his suit jacket, allowing himself a few seconds to regain control over his breathing. He daren't look at his friends as he speaks.

I had forgotten that I have some very important matters to attend to at home—forms for the medical school, he stammers. I must away. Forgive me, gents. Forgive me, he says.

On the ride to Gramercy Park, Mateo languishes in silence, resting his head upon the wall in the coach cabin and watching streetlights come and go outside the window in succession. It is not that he has never had urges since Bonnie died. It is just that they have always come about either tangled up in memories or attached to nothing at all.

His body still functions like well-wound clockwork, but all inclination towards romance and desire to keep intimate company lie dormant in his heart.

It vexes Mateo that his final relations with Bonnie took place nearly a month before Bonnie's death. It vexes Mateo even more that he cannot recall those relations so very vividly at all. Young parenthood had been such a whirlwind; he and Bonnie had somehow supposed that they would have more time.

If Mateo forces the matter in his mind, his brain will invent details: the smooth of Bonnie's skin under his palms, the feel of Bonnie's lips wet on his neck in the dark. Of course, the better part of Mateo knows that these are older memories—a patchwork of other experiences fabricated together to make up for something already lost.

Mateo still dreams of Bonnie sometimes, and when he does, it aches.

His friends want him to seduce some young thing—some girl no older than Santana.

He wants his wife, aging with him in a twenty year-old bed.

Though Mateo usually keeps to a reasonable bedtime, tonight he remains awake for a long while after arriving at his apartment from the bachelor cottage. He doesn't change out of his clothes or tuck himself into bed. Instead, he remains seated in his sitting room, nursing a bottle of scotch and glaring at the wall. He allows his mind to entertain certain dangerous thoughts, convincing himself all the while that he does so only due to the lateness of the hour and because he is on the brink of sleep.

What if he were to meet Fowler's nurse? What if he were to court her and to enjoy so doing? What if she were charming, handsome, and clever? What if he fell in love?

Mateo imagines, for a moment, bringing this faceless girl home to meet Santana at the bachelor cottage. His brain tells him that he could never love a woman who did not love his daughter, but then his gut wrenches, as if someone had stabbed him through with a knife. How could he give Santana a stepmother who was her peer in age? And even if the woman were Santana's elder, how could he ever allow that woman to replace the mother that Santana does not remember?

A part of him knows that he would never find a new wife who could love Santana.

And, dear God, all the nurses at the hospital are white!

How could Mateo ever marry a white woman? His fair complexion allows him to camouflage and conceal himself amongst the Smiths and Joneses and Bakers of Gramercy Park, but it does not change the facts that he was born in San Juan and that his father was a Spaniard and his mother a Boricua girl born tied to a plantation. Mateo may be an American by nationality, but he is not without his colors. Would he have to silence his Spanish or lose his appetite for his mother's spiced green and yellow cooking in order to make a new marriage work?

No matter what the placard on his office door reads, he is not a Lucas but a Lopez.

Bonnie always loved those parts of Mateo that he kept concealed from the rest of the world.

He will never find another woman who loves him as Bonnie did—in his nakedness, in his sunshine and his shadows, both.

His heart seams tangle and knot.

No, of course it is foolish of him to think that he could remarry. Even if he could find a woman to love his daughter and keep his secrets, he could never give his mother the satisfaction of seeing him happy with another woman, other than Bonnie. More particularly, he could not do so with a woman who was Bonnie's antithesis. He would sooner make himself miserable than to allow his mother to think that he was wrong—than to satisfy his mother in her pigheaded belief that there could ever be someone else for him than Bonnie, someone better.

He pours himself more scotch.

He misses Bonnie more than ever.

Long after midnight, Mateo wonders, beneath the veil of alcohol that has spread out over his thoughts, what Bonnie might have wanted for him, in these years following her death. Would she have encouraged Mateo to remarry or even just to court a girl? Would she have wanted him to give their Santana a new mother? Older couples must sometimes speak of their wishes while lying together at night. But Mateo and Bonnie were not so very old.

Bonnie never told Mateo how to go on without her.

Some portion of Mateo's heart knows—or supposes—or hopes, desperately—that Bonnie would have wanted, above all else, for him to have happiness.

The trouble is that Mateo does not know how to be happy in Bonnie's absence.

Santana brings Mateo joy but only she, and even then there is always some portion of Mateo's heart that is like the plot at the Woodlawn: silent, out of the way, trodden upon, and solely for Bonnie.

If Mateo had only known then what he now knows—

If Mateo had only been a better doctor, husband, man—

He awakens in his chair at first light, his mouth dry and sour from the scotch, his body cramped and aching from its unfavorable position. He rises from his place, dresses for the day, and travels via his usual streetcar to the hospital.

En route to the Bellevue, his mind meanders. Will he never know the touch of a woman again until the day of his death? Maybe it wouldn't have to mean love. Maybe not marriage. He knows that in certain places in Europe, the people are very modern. Some of the Romantics were modern. Is that what he is—a Romantic? He hasn't the time to sort himself out before he arrives on East 26th Street.

Mateo performs his duties, as he usually would. When he encounters Fowler, Stewart, and Wright in the hallways or on the wards, he smiles at them politely and speaks nothing concerning what happened amongst their little group at the club last night. Fowler, Stewart, and Wright offer him the same courtesy in return. Because they are all four gentlemen, they will never refer to that old unpleasantness again.

Thank God Mateo can pass as a gentleman.

He doesn't know how to be anything else.

At lunchtime, Mateo makes the long journey to Hester Street. Along the way, his thoughts trip over one another and jumble. Maybe he could court a woman after Santana were grown—

But Santana is grown, isn't she?

It is she who should be marrying, not her aging father.

If life had taken a different course, Santana would be taking Sunday strolls through Gramercy Park with gentlemen callers—wealthy young businessmen, doctors, and attorneys who would make offers to Mateo for her hand, promising to care for her for the rest of her life, if Mateo would only allow it. Maybe they would give her flowers. Maybe kisses to her hand. Maybe pretty rings. Maybe their hearts.

Mateo feels another jab through his gut, thinking on how he keeps Santana in a state of perpetual childhood. She has never even seen a young man of her age up close, let alone spoken to or gone courting with one. How can Mateo think so much of his own loneliness when Santana must always be lonely? He has made her a prisoner, just like her mother and grandmother before her. She has never asked to leave the bachelor cottage or to have a companion, but would she even know to ask, if she wanted those things? Would she dare to do it?

Mateo thinks vaguely of Spain again—or at least of somewhere far away from these insular walls in New York.

He arrives at the Jewish boarding house in a daze. He administers to Puck, but he does not spend so very much time at his task. It comforts him that the boy's strength and maneuverability have improved considerably even over the last several weeks. Puck's reflexes are good.

Mateo finishes examining and caring for Puck within an hour. Afterward, he takes his leave from the boarding house forthwith. Rather than returning immediately to the hospital, Mateo hails a hack and makes his way to West 25th Street. Though he has not visited the Tenderloin district since Bonnie came to live with him at the bachelor cottage, he finds that he still knows the place by heart.

Normally, Mateo might worry about someone recognizing him in a slum like this one, but such is the character of this slum in particular that no one dares to recognize anyone here, for fear of being recognized himself in turn.

By now, Mateo is agitated, restless. He paces down the sidewalks and stands under an awning, smoking his pipe too quickly. He opens and quickly closes a certain silver clutch, produced from his pocket, glancing at a photograph. He is a weak man, and he hates his friends for filling his head with unattainable notions. The unfairness of it all rankles at him, sharp like a blade inside.

Three times, he nearly hails a hack to take him back to the Bellevue, but ultimately he remains in the slum. He makes his way to a certain building, owned by a certain woman. He says certain things. He pays a certain fee. The certain woman takes his jacket and leads him up a narrow flight of stairs to a certain room. There is a certain girl inside.

She is no older than Santana.

Mateo looks at the girl, sprawled out on the bed—the way the sunlight hits her just so at all her curves and angles, illuminating the rounds of her, making her lustrous and bright. She looks back at him in a certain way. Her lips curl, certain.

I—, Mateo stammers. I-I must away, he says. Forgive me. Forgive me.

He wants his wife, aging with him in a twenty year-old bed.

* * *

That night, Mateo finds Santana sitting in the bay window reading, an old copy of the Scribner open across her lap. She does not hear Mateo step up to the threshold of the room and so doesn't look up from the page at his approach. Mateo takes the opportunity to watch Santana at her leisure. He leans against the doorframe, hands in pockets. It has always been so easy for him to love Santana as well as he ought to while she reads.

What does Santana imagine when she devotes herself to her stories, Mateo wonders? Does she ever consider those things that he considers concerning her? Does she envision what course her life will take—what happiness lies ahead for her? love, marriage, and children?

Mateo doesn't know who will be Santana's companion throughout her life, but he does know this: that that man, whoever he is, must make Santana look like she does while she is reading, like she carries peace inside her in the same way that a lantern carries light.

Maybe Santana's future husband will love to watch Santana reading, like Mateo does.

Maybe Santana's future husband will see the beauty in her stillness, in her deep and careful thought.

* * *

Keeping secrets can lead a man down queer paths—or so Mateo discovers on the day when the Spanish sink the Maine.

An intern reads the news aloud from the morning paper to several of the senior surgeons as they sip coffee in the hospital dining hall. Some of the fellows gruff and grunt, expressing their displeasure at this sudden turn in events. Others make cruel jokes, saying, Those brutes have really done it this time, haven't they? We'll blow the bastards clear from the water! You'll see! Still others cuss and express their patriotism in the most vivid language.

Mateo remains silent.

It shouldn't so disconcert him, knowing that the U.S. and Spain are now at odds.

After all, he knows where his allegiances lie.

He has never left the U.S., not since moving to New York from Puerto Rico when he was only an infant. It was his father who was born in Madrid, not him. Of all of the strains that exist in Mateo, the Spanish strain is the one that it most distant from everything that Mateo knows. Mateo is more Boricua than Spanish and more American than Boricuan. He oughtn't to feel any personal ties to Spain at all.

Except.

Except.

The news gets Fowler, Stewart, and Wright talking to Mateo again, as if nothing had happened between the four of them the other night at the club. Mateo's friends snag him in the hallways, each one to say, I have heard McKinley wants $50 million for a defense fund, and, I hope we get them good, and, Blood will have blood. They nudge Mateo on the arm and expect him to agree with them, to share in their belligerent sentiments. Mateo tries to convince himself that he would feel just as reluctant for the U.S. to go to war with any nation on the earth as with Spain, for he is a pacifist, a humanist, and a gentleman.

And yet.

And yet.

Mateo can only wear a stretched smile and mumble, Well, I suppose we'll know more once all the reports come in from Havana, won't we?

It is a queer path to tread, falling in amongst a cohort who might consider him their enemy if only they knew the truth. Mateo wonders if his friends would so frankly air their dislike of Spain—the Spanish monarchy, the old Prime Minister Castillo, the trouble with Cuba—if they knew what blood flowed in Mateo's veins and who his ancestors were.

Mateo's Lopez forefathers were very wealthy, not of the aristocracy themselves but married into it and friendly towards it—classmates with princes at the best boarding schools, neighbors with dukes and ministers in the countryside. The Lopez family lived on sprawling Spanish manors and summered in Majorca. They were patriots to a one.

Now Mateo wonders if he himself is a patriot. Does he not love America enough? Does he love Spain too much? He had wanted to take Santana to Madrid, to find a new life for her there, but if the U.S. and Spain go to war, then how will he realize his plans? How will his dreams be reconciled to this new reality?

Fowler insists that Mateo accompany him, Stewart, and Wright to the pub to drink in honor of the Union and the poor, brave American sailors dead in Cuban waters. When the bartender learns of the reason for the surgeons' convocation, he offers them their brandy at half-price, claiming that it's only honorable for him to do so.

Stewart, Fowler, and Wright make toasts, and the rest of the pub joins in, disparaging atrocities and growing increasingly freer with their curses, until suddenly Spain and Mexico become one nation and remembering the Maine is just the same as remembering the Alamo.

All the while, Mateo treads his strange path alone, feeling guilty for wrongs he has not wrought, indignant at slights not meant per se to pierce him, ashamed to feel ashamed, and strangely lonely despite his company. He stares at his brandy more than drinks it and laughs only hollow, perfunctory laughs, even at Stewart's best foolishnesses. His hands look very white under the lamplight but his hair and mustache look so very dark reflected in the mirror behind the bar.

Though the other surgeons remain at the pub for a long while, Mateo excuses himself very early in the night and goes home to the bachelor cottage before the clock has even tolled seven. When he finds Santana peeling potatoes in the kitchen, he tells her the news about the Maine.

Oh, she says quietly, chewing over the information as if she can't quite reckon what to make of it. But why would Spain unleash such an attack? Weren't we there to help them with Cuba's transition?

Mateo's own answer surprises him.

I suppose, he says, that they did not wish to be trodden upon. I suppose it wore on them. They must have been tired, sweet.

He feels in himself something close to tiredness for wanting so much—for wanting everything to be quiet again, for wanting a place where he has never been, for sights that his eyes have yet to behold. When Santana only nods and doesn't smile, he wants these things more than ever and waxes wearier in his bones for so wanting.

He has wandered down a queer path, and it exhausts him to keep his secrets.

* * *

The owner of the boarding house desires to evict young Mr. Puckerman from the premises. When Mateo inquires as to why, the owner explains that it is because young Mr. Puckerman has begun to say vulgar things to his daughters in stolen moments around the house.

Mateo understands, of course. Nevertheless, he entreats the owner to allow him at least a week or two to secure new accommodations for Puck. He promises that Puck will put forth most exemplary behavior in the meanwhile. The owner begrudgingly agrees to postpone the eviction.

When Mateo tells Puck the news, Puck only wants to know if he can return to the circus yet.

Mr. Adams is waiting for me, Doc, he complains.

Mr. Adams will not want to see you until you are entirely well, Mateo cautions. You've made good progress, but you have not entirely recuperated your strength. You are not fit enough to travel—not to a circus and neither with it. You must wait. And in the meanwhile, you mustn't pester your host's daughters. It is in bad form to abuse a man's hospitality. Do try to comport yourself like a gentleman.

Puck smirks. Sure thing, Doc, he says, as though Mateo's advice were a joke. I'll behave myself so well that John Jacob Astor will send me a personal invitation to stay at the Waldorf.

Thankfully, despite his wryness, Puck does indeed make an effort to comport himself better at the boarding house. He begins to help the owner with simple chores around the property, shoveling snow off the walk outside the front door, taking stock of dried goods in the pantry, and cleaning out the flue to the fireplace. To Mateo's great surprise, Puck actually proves to be quite an industrious worker, willing to take on any task to which his host assigns him, no matter how unsavory or drudging it may be.

If he were not such a rascal, he would be a good boy, the owner admits.

He would be a good man, Mateo says, if someone were to believe that he could be.

When Santana makes her daily inquiry concerning Puck's progress, Mateo tells her about Puck's unexpected quality of character. She frowns in response, flummoxed.

Who would have ever thought that someone could learn to work so diligently, growing up at a circus? she remarks. How very queer a thing.

* * *

Mateo has just performed a very successful laparotomy before an audience of seventy medical students. Following the surgery, he steps out into the hallway, chatting with the intern who assisted him with his work, elated by the good outcome of the procedure and feeling very well within himself. Almost immediately, someone flanks him—a student nurse to whom he has never spoken before.

Dr. Lucas? she pips. They've just sent me from the lobby. They say they've some unhappy news for you. One of the employees from your second home has had an accident—

Mateo's heart seams cinch so taut as to momentarily halt his heartbeat.

Everyone from the hospital who has visited the bachelor cottage supposes that Santana and Alma are Mateo's housemaids, his employees. No one knows that they are his family. Dread and dizziness threaten to sink Mateo.

What? Whom? Which one? he garbles.

The student nurse blanches. Oh, I'm afraid I don't know, she says. They only asked me to come fetch you. They say they have his body in the emergency pavilion. They brought him in via ambulance, but there was nothing they could do. They say that—

She may jabber on for some while, but Mateo doesn't hear what else she has to say.

It only matters to Mateo that she mentioned a man—that she used the words his body and him.

Before he can think through anything, Mateo finds himself stalking off the ward, navigating quickly and deftly through the halls and corridors on his way to the emergency pavilion. He moves like a whirlwind, heart seams strung out between fear and hope.

Oh please, he mutters to himself.

When he strides into the emergency pavilion, the physicians there greet him by name.

We're so sorry, Matthew, they tell him. They say he fell in front of the streetcar—or walked out in front of it, maybe. We aren't certain which. Tell us, was he at all morose? Given over to despair, perhaps?

Mateo ignores their questions, searching the cots until he finds one both occupied by a very still human form and covered by a sheet. Without asking anyone's permission to do so, Mateo flanks the cot and lifts the sheet up as though he were airing a bed. He holds his breath until he reveals the human form. Oh please, oh please, oh please.

Aloysius Bradley looks like cleaved meat, but he is still enough himself that Mateo knows him for who he is and can feel assured that he is not anyone else.

At once, Mateo breathes.

* * *

The story comes to Mateo in parts and pieces.

The physicians in the emergency pavilion tell Mateo that Bradley fell in front of the Park Avenue streetcar and that its horses trampled him to death. Though multiple passersby witnessed the event, no one from the scene of the accident can say whether Bradley fell in earnest or rather if he threw himself down on the tracks by his own volition instead. Though the latter possibility is ghastly to consider, certain persons infirm in mind have been known to take shocking actions from time to time.

The police officers who recovered Bradley's body from the scene of the accident deduced that Bradley was Mateo's man because Bradley had been carrying a letter from his brother, which listed Bradley's address at the bachelor cottage.

When Mateo arrives home to the bachelor cottage in the evening, he discreetly draws Alma into the maid's quarters while Santana remains in the kitchen, peeling potatoes for supper. In confidence, Mateo divulges the unhappy news concerning Bradley to his mother and asks, very quietly, if she happens to know what business Bradley had on Park Avenue in the middle of the afternoon on a Thursday.

Alma admits that Bradley approached her just a few days ago, asking her to read tarot for him.

He wanted to know if he should move to California, to join his brother there, as a miner, she explains. He thought that the angels and devils of the cards could help him to know what he should do.

So you told him to move to California? Mateo asks, both surprised by this new information and confused as to how it correlates to the events surrounding Bradley's death.

I told him nothing, Alma objects. The cards were dirty for me—or I was dirty for them. I could not read for him, so I asked Santana to do so instead. She read for him yesterday.

So Santana told him to move to California? Mateo clarifies, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers.

No, Alma objects again. Santana did not tell him to move to California. Santana drew the Death card for him, and now he is dead, claro que sí.

Whereas before Mateo only felt annoyed, now anger surges through him. How dare his mother blame Santana for anything having to do with Bradley's death! How dare she involve Santana in the ridiculous business of this card reading in the first place! The compulsion to protect and shield Santana courses through Mateo, hot in his blood.

Cards are just cards, Mateo snarls. Bradley is dead, and Santana has nothing to do with it, do you hear? You had no right to make Santana read your dirty cards, and I swear to your God if you speak one word that would imply her fault in Bradley's death, I shall have you sent to the asylum and deny that I ever knew you once you are there—!

The longer and more vociferously that Mateo rants, the more his mother's face assumes an expression of open horror. Several seconds elapse before Mateo realizes that his threats themselves do not distress her but rather that a new presence at the threshold of the room does. Mateo sees her eyes settle upon something just over his shoulder, and he knows what that something is at once.

Alma's eyes widen, and her mouth gapes open, but Mateo cannot stop his words right away—he is speaking, has already spoken, and has already said too much.

Mr. Bradley is dead? Santana squeaks. Mr. Bradley died after I drew him that card?

Mateo turns to face his daughter and finds her standing in the doorframe to the room, holding a potato in one hand and a paring knife in the other. She wears her shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow, and her arms hang limply at her sides. Her expression is one of most delicate shock, like the slightest further provocation could shatter her like crystal. She seems all at once very young. Her trepidation recalls those days when she was just a wee thing and even Mateo's raised voice used to frighten her to the bones.

Is it true? she says, voice turning thick. Is it true that Mr. Bradley is dead? What happened to him? Oh, God.

At her last word, tears flood her eyes, and she turns her back on Mateo and Alma, starting away from them into the kitchen from whence she came, not wanting them to see her cry.

Santana—, Mateo says, following her at once.

Santana Luisa—, Alma echoes, following after him.

They enter the kitchen just in time to see Santana set the paring knife and potato down upon the counter. She stalks over to the sink and dries her hands furiously on a dishtowel, rubbing them almost abrasively. Her shoulders shudder as she tries to swallow down her tears. The effort required to silence them nearly causes her to gag.

Santana, Mateo says gently, coming up beside her and setting a hand on her right elbow. You haven't done anything wrong, my angel. There was an accident. Mr. Bradley had an accident. It is certainly a sad thing, what has happened to him, but you are not the cause of it, neither anything you have done or not done.

Alma flanks Santana on the other side, taking her by left elbow and guiding both her and Mateo so that their little group of three stands with their backs up against the counter and sink.

La Muerte viene para todos, Alma says in her practical way. She continues on in Spanish, Señor Bradley was an old man, Santana. He would have died eventually—if not today then on some other day. You must not trouble yourself of it.

She gives Santana a pat, and it surprises Mateo to see how he has misjudged her—how she does not mean to blame Santana for anything at all, how she worries more for Santana than for anything else. Perhaps he always thinks the worst of her because she always thought the worst of him, but maybe things are different with her where it concerns Santana. Maybe they are easier, more unbiased. He feels a swell of affection for his mother.

But if I hadn't have drawn that card—, Santana sniffles.

Mateo shakes his head. Cards are only cards, he says firmly. If anyone is to blame for this tragedy, it is the Park Avenue streetcar or perhaps the horses that pulled it along. Maybe it is the driver of the streetcar for not stopping it in time. Maybe it is Mr. Bradley himself for his clumsiness or his brother for inviting him to California. It most certainly isn't you, Santana. You have not done anything wrong.

A sob breaks over Santana like a wave, and she draws a hand up to cover her mouth, trying to press back her tears. Mateo can see her endeavoring to believe in his and her grandmother's words of comfort and absolution, but he can also see how very difficult it is for her to think well of herself. He gives her elbow a squeeze, and Alma does the same on her other side.

I feel like I have done wrong, Santana cries.

What you feel, Mateo says, is grief. And it is only natural for you to grieve Mr. Bradley. You have known him since you were a little girl, and he was always kind to you. It is a regretful thing that has happened to him, and we must all grieve it. You don't have to feel better about his passing right away, my love. You only have to realize that it was not your fault.

All right, Santana cries, shoulders curling into another sob.

All right? Mateo repeats.

Santana nods, unable to speak more. She continues to weep, though more quietly now. Alma rubs at her back with one hand and at her elbow with the other; Mateo holds her by the arm, as if supporting her against collapse.

For a few moments, it surprises him that Santana seems so upset concerning Bradley's death, but then he realizes that Bradley's is the first death in her memory. Santana does not recall the passing of her grandfather or mother, and so Bradley's passing may as well be the first one that has ever happened in her life. Whatever grief Santana feels for him in particular is compounded by the grief she feels concerning the whole human race and her sudden, real understanding of mankind's mortality. She grieves both because Bradley is dead and because he could die.

She is not a child anymore, and now she will never be so again.

I'm sorry, sweeting, Mateo says, leaning over to kiss her hair. I am so sorry.

He remains in place, leaned against the counter, Santana beside him and Alma beside her. He stares through the kitchen, down the hallway and into the parlor. Bonnie's was not his first death, but it was the one that changed him. In some ways, it is his only death—the only one that matters.

Santana weeps for a long, long while, until finally Alma mutters, You must go to bed, child, and starts to lead her away.

Mateo remains against the counter. He supposes that there will have to be a funeral—that he will have to send word to Bradley's brother in California concerning Bradley's passing. He will have to find a place to bury Bradley. He will have to find another gardener. He will have to be pragmatic, to search out if Bradley had a will and to execute Bradley's wishes, if Bradley had any.

Amidst all his other thoughts, he thinks mostly of Santana and of the fact that death has suddenly become, for the first time, a real and permanent feature in her world.

* * *

Mateo pays eight dollars to have Bradley buried at Calvary in Queens, since Bradley was a Catholic. Mateo invites Santana and Alma to attend the service with him, but they both decline to go, with Santana claiming that she does not feel well enough to leave the house and Alma opting to stay home to look after her.

With Bradley's brother far away in California and Bradley having no other family in the United States, Mateo is the sole mourner at his funeral, besides the priest. When the priest utters prayers for Bradley's soul, Mateo doesn't cross himself, but he does toss a handful of dirt onto Bradley's cheap, pine casket.

He sends a telegraph to California telling Bradley's brother what has happened and inquiring as to whether or not Bradley had a will. In the meanwhile, he determines to keep Bradley's things in the shed on the bachelor cottage property, until he knows what to do with them otherwise.

It does trouble him that he knows so little concerning Bradley, even after employing the man for so many years.

When Santana asks about the funeral, Mateo tells her it was lovely.

* * *

Santana startles easily and has since the day of her birth. She is a sensitive girl and careful. It does not require so very much provocation to cause her upset at all. Anything that slams or happens all of a sudden can and often does distress her.

Bradley's death occurred all of a sudden.

It startled Santana, that's all.

Surely that is the reason why Santana sticks so close to Mateo now whenever he is at the house—why she will not stray more than a shadow's length from him, why she seems so skittish, so wan, so drawn into herself, biting at her bottom lip and looking everywhere but at the shed abandoned at the back corner of the yard. She waits for Mateo in the bay window, holding her book in her lap but not reading it.

Abuela has taken a nap, she tells Mateo, greeting him in the foyer and relieving him of his jacket, pinning it onto its hook. She tires herself from working all day, I suppose. I didn't want to sit alone in the parlor all afternoon, so I began to prepare supper for tonight myself. I hope Abuela won't mind that I have done so?

I don't suppose she will, Mateo says.

Santana nods, grateful for his reassurance. Won't you stay until ten o'clock tonight? she implores him. I just—I suspect Abuela will want to go to sleep at an early hour, and I would be glad of the company, if I could have it.

Won't you want to go to sleep, as well? Mateo asks.

Santana's expression falters a bit; the false, nervous smile she had worn threatens to collapse into something else, but she recovers it just in time.

Oh, she says, I suppose I—

I'll stay, Mateo promises. I'll stay until you're ready to sleep.

Santana nods, grateful again. Thank you, Papa, she says, wringing her hands together, looking at everything except for his face, startled, startled, startled.

* * *

The owner of the boarding house sends a telegraph to Mateo at Mateo's office, summoning Mateo to Hester Street forthwith. Because Mateo has no patients to see, he does as the telegraph directs, hiring a hack and arriving at the boarding house within the hour. He finds Puck waiting on the front stoop of the house, smoking a pipe and looking rather like a scolded dog set outdoors for committing some messy crime.

What happened? Mateo asks him.

Puck shrugs guiltily. Nothing happened, he says, chewing the stem of his pipe, staring off into the distance at something beyond the city.

Mateo shakes his head and doffs his hat, disapproving. He sidesteps Puck and lets himself in the front door to the boarding house, calling out for the owner as he goes.

When Mateo finally happens upon him, the owner can scarcely make himself explain what happened. The owner stammers, red of face and continually stoking over his beard, unable to soothe himself enough. He gestures toward the front of the house, indicating Puck on the stoop though he cannot see him through the door.

He—he—, the owner flusters, uncertain as to whether he ought to shout or whisper, incapable of looking to any one place in particular. That kwlygʼan said the most vulgar things to my daughter, and then he—he—he kissed her sensuously, in a way that should only be between husbands and wives and in the dark of night! I will not suffer him to spend another night under my roof, no matter how much money that frei circus proprietor pays for him to remain here! I will not suffer it, do you hear?

Mateo frowns. I understand, he says. I will collect his things from his room and settle your payments, and then I shall take him away with me. I am sorry for the trouble he has caused. I am sure your daughter is a good girl.

She is a good girl, the owner frets.

Puck spends most of the ride back to Mateo's office utterly silent and stony-faced. Only when the hack turns onto East 32nd Street does Puck finally speak.

I hated it there anyway, Puck says.

Mateo sighs and runs a hand along his face. I'm sure you did, he allows.

Puck doesn't make a reply to Mateo; he just grunts and rests his head against the wall, waiting for the hack to convey him to whatever his destination will be.

* * *

Within the hour, Mateo determines that he cannot keep Puck at his office—not indefinitely.

For one thing, Mateo cannot see other patients at his office as long as he has Puck holed up in the examination room. For another thing, now that he is mobile, Puck proves to be a noisy tenant, taking loud, heavy footsteps; moving furniture across the floor to accommodate his needs; and even jostling into things, given the cramped quarters.

Mateo tries to shush Puck, but the boy is restless, well enough to make a pest of himself but still too invalidated to go without his physician's care. If Mateo's landlord learns that Mateo has chosen to keep Puck in the building, Mateo will have many repercussions to face. Mateo would keep Puck in his apartment downstairs, but he hasn't anyplace for Puck to sleep there, except for on the floor.

You need a job, Mateo announces, stopping Puck from pacing like an animal in its cage. And, luckily, I have one for you.

I already have a job, Puck gripes, if I could just get back to it.

You're still not well enough to travel across country, Mateo tells him. However, you are well enough to tend the grounds at my second home until you have sufficiently recuperated enough strength to make it back to your circus. I would pay you very well, and you could live in the small quarters on the property.

Now Puck seems intrigued. He raises an eyebrow.

That might not be too awful, he says, perhaps more to himself than to Mateo.

It wouldn't be too awful at all, Mateo affirms, and especially considering that you must either take the job or have no endeavors with which to busy yourself for the next several weeks during your convalescence. All that I will require of you is your hard work and a promise that you will comport yourself as a gentleman whilst you are under my employ.

A gentleman? Puck repeats, uncertain as to what his personal conduct might have to do with him working as a groundskeeper.

Momentarily, Mateo hesitates, wondering how much he can trust Puck. Will Mateo eventually live to regret asking Puck to inhabit his property, as did the owner of the boarding house on Hester Street? If Puck makes any improper advances at the bachelor cottage, Mateo may well have to toss him out to the wind, never mind the vow that Mateo made to Adams.

There are, Mateo says slowly, certain ladies who live and work on the property, keeping house and preparing a nightly meal, of which I make it a habit to partake. They are... tenderhearted... and will not well-tolerate any sort of vulgarity or impropriety from those persons who keep their company.

If you were to dwell at the property with them, Mateo goes on, I would need you to make a most solemn promise that you would do nothing to offend either them or their virtue. You would have to behave in a manner befitting to your station, circumspect and beyond reproach. It would be of the utmost importance that you show great modesty in your interactions with these women.

If you cannot make this promise to me, then I shall have to arrange some other accommodations for you—which will be a shame, considering that I know you are a most excellent worker and would be an asset to my household.

Mateo stares at Puck, sizing him.

What do you say, Mr. Puckerman? Do I have your word as a gentleman?

Something sparks behind Puck's eyes—something like the unvoiced longing Santana sometimes betrays in her little yearning looks and breathless moments. Puck wants without being able to say for what.

Sure thing, Doc, he swears.

* * *

On the ride to Gramercy Park, the wheels on the hack bump into and out of the deep divots in the road, such as there always are on New York streets in early springtime. The smells of damp and nascent budding hang in the air. Two phrases chase one another around in circles within Mateo's thoughts, one from his boyhood Latin lessons and the other from an old nursery rhyme.

Ovem lupo commitere.

Sleep, my little one, sleep. Thy father guards the sheep.

The hack turns onto the road where the bachelor cottage stands, and Mateo watches Puck's eyes widen. He sees Puck marvel at the ornate fixtures decorating every house and the fabulous expanses of yard bordering the sidewalks. He wants to believe that Puck's better nature will prevail upon Puck to do well and behave honorably, but part of him quails, wondering if he hasn't just made a very grave mistake, bringing this wolf home to his most precious flock.

As Mateo leads Puck up the walk to the front stoop of the bachelor cottage, Mateo knows that he is himself a hypocrite. Though Mateo realizes that he oughtn't to disparage or consider any man incapable due to circumstances of birth beyond that man's control, he finds that he dreads that such a boy as Puck will never overcome the rapscallion nature bred into him through generations. He also finds that he cannot fully trust that Puck will deny himself from seizing those things which might be at all convenient and desirable to him.

The doctor and humanitarian in Mateo wants desperately to believe that Puck will elevate himself to this occasion and prove the better now that someone has invited him to be so, but the father in Mateo hates the idea of a rough fellow like Puck being anywhere near to his dear, sweet daughter Santana.

Remain here for a moment, Mateo instructs, leaving Puck upon the stoop as he lets himself into the house. He closes the door behind him, steeling himself, and calls out for his mother and daughter, Santana! Mama! It is I, and I have brought with me some new company for you to meet! I hope you are disposed.

Santana and Alma appear in the parlor, coming from the kitchen, drying their hands on their aprons. They wear concerned expressions—startled, as it were, that Mateo has brought someone to the bachelor cottage without presenting any advanced warning that he would do so. It is a most unprecedented occurrence, and both granddaughter and grandmother search around the room, frantic, wondering where this new guest could be.

Mateo soothes their concerns, going over to stand close to his family and speaking to them both in a low voice and in Spanish.

He is standing on the stoop, just outside the door, he says. The company is Noah Puckerman, the circus boy. He is going to be the new gardener here and live in the shed in the yard. I wanted him to meet you before he began his work.

He's going to live in Mr. Bradley's shed? Santana asks in English, affronted.

You should have told us he was coming, Alma scolds in Spanish. I have not prepared enough supper to feed a fourth person. Now he will think poorly of us—that we have poor manners. Is he highborn? How much shame is there to me for this lapse?

Mateo shakes his head, ignoring Santana's question and replying to Alma's. He is not highborn, no, he answers in Spanish. His manners may prove very crude indeed. You mustn't feel ashamed at all.

He fixes Santana with a serious look.

These circus persons have a very ignominious reputation, he says in English. You shall have to deal with the boy using your own best manners and hope that he will rise to meet your distinguished standard. Do not allow your interactions to happen in reverse.

Of course, Papa, Santana consents.

No matter if he is lowborn. Manners, Santana, Alma snips in Spanish, unaware that Mateo has just presented Santana with the same instruction in another tongue.

In the next moment, Mateo returns to the door and invites Noah Puckerman into the house from without. Puck shuffles into the foyer, carrying his tatty and unimpressive rucksack in one hand and doffing his hat as he comes along. At once, Mateo perceives some smallness in him and likes it very much. Under the brown light of an afternoon house, Puck seems almost misplaced and knowledgeable of that misplacement. It occurs to Mateo that a boy who has grown up at a circus knows not what to do with himself within the walls of a polite home.

Suddenly, compassion for his guest swells in Mateo.

Perhaps the wolf is afraid to step out from the woods and into the pasture, as it were.

Mr. Noah Puckerman, Mateo says, clapping Puck on the shoulder, this is Mrs. Alma Lopez, and this is young Miss Santana Lopez. They live within the house.

Howdy, ladies, Puck says, giving a slight bow. Y'all can call me Puck, if you like. Everybody does. This is, um, a swell place you got here.

All at once, Mateo has too many things to see at once: Puck seeing Santana, Santana seeing Puck, Alma seeing them seeing each other, his family meeting their first stranger since Bradley, Santana meeting her first peer—the first person of her own age to whom she has ever spoken at all.

Her gaze sweeps over Puck, taking in his every aspect, trying to make what is alien in him familiar to her. When she speaks, she does so in her smallest, politest voice, an almost imperceptible tremor at the corners of her mouth.

How do you do, Mr. Puckerman? she greets, stooping into a slight curtsy. The Good Doctor has told us concerning your confinement and convalescence. What a grateful thing that you are finally well enough to be up and walking about.

Whereas Santana greets Puck with a kind of tentative curiosity, Puck greets Santana with amiable warmth. He seems very well pleased to find that she is who she is and not, perhaps, who he had imagined she would be. It occurs to Mateo for the first time that perhaps Puck has felt lonely for the company of persons his own age during his time in New York.

Mighty grateful, Puck says, grinning.

He shakes Santana's hand, taking her by surprise.

You will have to tell him, Alma says in Spanish, that his supper will be late. It will take me another hour or so to cook it. I do not so much like the looks of him. He has the Devil's smile, and his hands are dirty. He will have to wash up before I will have him at my table.

Santana reclaims her hand for herself from Puck. She laughs, nervous. You must forgive my grandmother, she says in English to Puck. She doesn't understand English so very well at all. She says that she'll have supper ready for you in a while.

Mateo does not know what he had expected to see in Santana's behavior toward Puck, whether it were like or dislike. However, it is very plain to him now that all that is in Santana for this new meeting is hesitation and flightiness—the same nervous disposition that seizes upon her whenever the surgeons of the Bellevue come around for bachelor cottage soirees or Mateo pays her what she esteems to be too high a compliment. She cannot meet Puck's eyes, and her hands knot in front of her, anxious.

Puck acts as if he wants to know Santana very much, but Santana acts as if she might be happiest hiding herself from him.

Come along, Mr. Puckerman, Mateo says, clapping Puck on the shoulder again. Let us bid farewell to these ladies for now, and I shall show you out back to your quarters. There, we can discuss in finer detail what your duties as the gardener shall be, and maybe once we have made our conversation, your supper will be ready. What, say?

Sure thing, Doc, Puck consents, still overwhelmed by the fixtures of the room and the new persons he has met. He nods, reticent, at Alma. Mrs. Lopez, he says. He more fully bows to Santana. Miss, he says.

Mateo leads him through the parlor, into the kitchen, and out the side door to the garden. When Puck sees the shed, his new abode, he whistles through his teeth, remarking that it is three times the size of his tent back at Mr. Adams' circus. Upon taking inventory of Mr. Bradley's things inside the shed, Puck declares that he ain't never lived in a fancier place. Mateo finds his awe most pleasing and spends the next hour detailing to Puck those things that he will have to do to make a good gardener.

Normally, you will have to find your own meals, Mateo says. Mrs. Lopez will not entertain you as her guest every night. I shall give you some money from Mr. Adams as an allowance for this week, and next week you shall have your first salary from me, once you have earned it. Would you like to know your pay?

Puck picks up Bradley's old boudoir clock from the nightstand beside the bed, turning it over in his hands, learning the workmanship by touch. He shrugs and smiles his smirk-smile. That's all right, Doc, he says. I trust you to be fair.

Remember, Mateo tells him, you must comport yourself as a gentleman in order to earn your pay. No drinking, no carousing, no fighting, no vulgarity. You are to be up and at work by seven in the morning, and you are to remain at your labors until the setting of the sun. If I find that I like your efforts, I may be inclined to advance your salary.

Yes, Dr. Lucas, sir, Puck says. Thank you, Dr. Lucas, sir.

He is not a wolf but a dog eager to do well by his sheep.

* * *

It does not upset Puck that he has nothing but watery vegetable soup to eat, though Mateo, Santana, and Alma dine on fried beefsteak spiced with adobo just beside him. In fact, Puck proves highly solicitous in his compliments to Alma's cooking, asking Santana over and over again, between bites, if she would please make certain that Alma knows how much he appreciates his meal and how very much he enjoys it.

I bet Ma Jones'd lick somebody bare-fisted to come by a recipe like this one, he says. That's our camp cook, he adds quickly, wiping his mouth on the cuff of his sleeve.

For her part, Santana seems almost too nervous to eat in Puck's presence or perhaps too guilty. She takes only tiny bites and durst not look up from her plate, lest she somehow by accident meet his eyes. Whenever Puck makes a direct address to her, she practically ducks down in her chair.

Somehow it hadn't occurred to Mateo that Santana would be so incredibly shy, meeting a person her own age.

Despite Puck's obvious admiration for her cooking, Alma spends the entirety of the meal scowling at the boy. Afterwards, as Santana clears the table and Puck takes his leave for the shed, Alma pulls Mateo into the maid's quarters, where she expresses her displeasure with Puck in a low, furious whisper.

That boy will make trouble, she says in Spanish, holding Mateo by the elbow so that he must remain with her and listen. What were you thinking, bringing him here, where he will harass Santana?

He shan't harass Santana, Mateo defends. And he wanted you to know that he very much enjoyed his meal.

Alma scoffs. He is not the kind of youth that Santana ought to marry.

I did not bring him here to marry Santana, Mateo says. And even if I had, I don't believe that Santana has a mind for it. She seems not to like Puck very well. He discomfits her, in some way.

* * *

Secretly, Noah Puckerman reminds Mateo of himself as a young man: brash and rebellious but also incredibly eager to please those persons who have impressed him or whose opinions he values highly.

Just as he did at the boarding house—and likely at the circus before—Puck works most diligently at the bachelor cottage, fulfilling his duties both competently and eagerly, pruning the trees and hedges, watering various plants, painting the trimming around the windows, and mending holes along the fence. In some ways, he proves a better gardener than Bradley ever was because he is young and vigorous whereas Bradley was old and tired.

Whatever Alma's complaints about the boy and Santana's trepidations concerning him, Mateo does not regret hiring Puck in the least, and in fact takes some personal satisfaction in observing how Puck elevates himself to meet the expectations set for him, just as Mateo had hoped that he would.

Really, the only thing that Puck needed to become a gentleman was someone to treat him as such. Mateo was wrong to doubt him. He is Mateo's successful social experiment, a living proof that anyone can achieve successes and attain distinction if provided with the proper opportunity and motivation to do so.

It is a shame that Fowler, Stewart, and Wright cannot see Puck at his work—that the world cannot see him at it, actually.

He and Santana prove what Mateo has always believed: that anyone can be someone, that everyone is someone, that limitations hurt the collective rather than protect it.

* * *

The weather is clement when Mateo arrives at the bachelor cottage at one half-hour past six o'clock, but by the time he has finished eating supper with Alma and Santana and reading his evening newspaper in the parlor, the skies have cracked down lightning faults, and the clouds have burst into storm.

Heavy rain batters the roof of the house and pelts the windows at an angle. Every few minutes, thunder growls and the otherwise blackened sky illuminates, electric. It is a vivid springtime squall, of the sort that will rip down the electric wires over the intersections of the city streets and flood the grounds at Gramercy Park, saturating the earth.

Santana appears in the doorway to the parlor almost as soon as the first thunder rattles the house. She wrings her hands together and walks lightly, almost on tiptoe.

I've put Abuela to bed, she says meekly, so that we won't have to listen to her complain of all the racket. I don't suppose that you would like to stay here tonight, would you, Papa? You could save yourself from having to travel to your apartment in the rain.

Mateo smiles and folds his newspaper down so that he can better see Santana silhouetted in the glow from the lamp and then—briefly—spotlighted by a shock of lightning outside the bay window. He shakes his head, declining.

This storm swelled to its greatest intensity before it even broke. It wants to rage and rail a bit now, but within the hour, it will calm, and I then can take my leave in only a mild rain. It shan't trouble me so much.

But shall it trouble Mr. Puckerman? Santana asks. Mr. Bradley knew to plug the roof in the shed whenever there was a storm, but I don't suppose that Mr. Puckerman knows to do so. He'll wake in a deep puddle, with all his belongings soaked.

Mateo's heart seams give a tug, and he loves his daughter so much the more for her compassion towards a boy who otherwise unnerves her in this, what she considers the boy's moment of need.

Don't fret, sweeting, Mateo says. Puck has told me all about his life at the circus. Prior to his arrival in New York, he mostly lived outdoors, with only a thin tent tarp for his shelter. I suspect he is very accustomed to withstanding the elements. He is clever enough, and will know to plug the holes in his roof as soon as he sees them start to leak. He'll be well tonight, I am certain. If not, he'll come to us, as he needs to.

Santana nods, reassured concerning Puck, though still not altogether mollified. Her gaze darts around the room, chasing lamplight, and she hugs her arms around herself, tight.

There is a bit of a chill, she says. I worry for Abuela. Her bedroom can have a draft, you know. You don't suppose she'll catch cold, do you?

Mateo's heart seams give another tug as he realizes that Santana has taken all the concern that she might feel for herself in the storm and put it onto others. She is a girl so easily startled, but one thing that will always comfort her is to see that those persons for whom she cares are well-looked-after in times of duress. It is a selfless quality in her, to always attend to others when she is most frightened herself.

Smiling, Mateo sets down his newspaper beside his chair. Why don't we build a fire? he suggests. The warm air will rise up to her bedroom, and you and I can enjoy ourselves down here in the meanwhile. Let us make ourselves cozy, hm?

Mateo expects to win Santana's fullest grin and deepest dimples for his offer, but smile though Santana does, the expression does not rise all the way to her eyes. There is still something small in her and tremulous, something wan and somehow sad. Seeing it in this moment, Mateo realizes that he cannot recall the last time that it wasn't there—the last time when Santana seemed entirely and unrestrainedly happy.

I'll go fetch some wood from the pantry, she offers.

Mateo rises. I'll go with you, my love.

Father and daughter spend the next quarter hour arranging logs on the hearth, dousing the logs in kerosene, opening the fireplace flue, and igniting the logs in flames. They poke the burnings into place with brass instruments. As soon as the fire takes to the logs, an orange blush pervades the room, as does the sweet, curing scent of hickory smoke. Some minutes elapse before heat fills the parlor. The storm pummels the house outside all the while, voicing its animal displeasure in growling thunder rolls.

Mateo ambles to his feet, contented with his work, and smacks his hands together, clearing them of wood dust. Santana extends her hands, warming them over the hearth. The firelight catches her dark hair, painting reds through her locks and in the sheen on her eyes. She seems much less flighty than she did when she first entered the parlor but still quiet and oh so small.

Your grandmother should be very warm now, Mateo says, joining Santana in warming his hands over the hearth.

Thank you, Papa, Santana whispers, as if speaking a devotion.

* * *

Santana takes to rereading old books—favorites from her childhood, like Fenimore Cooper and Lewis Carroll and serials from the child's Scribner. She is very cautious about asking Mateo to bring them to her and at first even puts up the pretense that these old texts will provide supplementary reading for her only.

Oh, Papa, could you get me the newest Hardy story, The Well-Beloved? And, maybe, if you remember, could you also, perhaps, pick me out one of the old Leatherstockings? Maybe The Pioneers? Only if you like, of course, or if you remember to do it. I don't know that I'll get around to reading it this week. I suppose I might find the time.

Only after the first several instances of her asking will she admit that she wants the old books both in and for themselves.

Could I have Sara Crewe this week, Papa?

Would you like anything else to go with it? I believe Henry James has a new novella.

Oh, no, that's all right. Just Sara Crewe will do.

Though Mateo suspects that perhaps he will, he doesn't happen upon Santana weeping while she reads, not like she did reading Jack Tier. She is only quiet, introspective, perhaps even more polite than usual—a feat not unimpressive for such a well-mannered person as her.

Does she seem thinner to you? Mateo asks Alma, watching Santana in the bay window while he takes his coffee in the kitchen.

Alma doesn't look up from the dishes in the sink before shaking her head. She has always been too thin, she says, but she seems well enough to me.

Doesn't she seem just a bit—? Just somehow—?

But he cannot explain exactly what he means.

The next week, Mateo purchases the special edition of the Scribner which contains the full text for Sara Crewe. He presents it to Santana on Saturday afternoon, when they are in the garden together, taking the spring air and the scent of Alma's roses. When Santana tears back the packing paper, her mouth falls open, and she gasps.

But, Papa, it isn't even my birthday yet—or Christmas!

Mateo smiles at her in a way that might not reach his eyes.

Why wait to do good things, summer peach? Why wait when there is such a time as now?

* * *

**Spanish, Yiddish, and Latin translations:**

_**¿Sabes qué hora es? ¿Cómo puedes tardar tanto, con Santana en espera? ¿Te asaltaron? : Do you know what hour it is? How could you be so late, with Santana waiting for you? Were you mugged?**_

_**Lo siento : I'm sorry**_

_**Por supuesto, la cena está fría. Hace horas que la preparé. Pero la pudiera haber preparado hace días y no te importaría, ¿verdad?, mi chico descuidado : Of course, dinner is cold. I made it hours ago. But I may as well have made it days ago, for all you care, right, my careless boy?**_

_**¡Ven! ¡Come! ¡No voy a calentar la comida por tercera vez! : Come! Eat! I won't warm the food for a third time!**_

_**La Muerte viene para todos : Death comes for us all**_

_**kwlyg**__**ʼ**__**an : scoundrel (Yiddish)**_

_**frei : secular or nonreligious Jew, oftentimes used as a slur (Yiddish)**_

_**Ovem lupo commitere : The wolf guards the sheep (Latin)**_


	4. Anna Louise

**Warning: This chapter contains major character deaths. If you need more information about the circumstances of the deaths before you read, please PM me, and I will provide details, no questions asked.**

* * *

**Part IV: Anna Louise**

When Mateo exits the Bellevue to take his afternoon lunch break, it shocks him to discover Puck seemingly awaiting him outside the hospital doors. It shocks him even more when he catches sight of the expression on Puck's face, which is uncharacteristically somber and even perhaps grave. Mateo wonders for what reason Puck has come to meet him at the hospital, and curious anxiety wells in him. Immediately, he desists from attempting to hail a hack and instead jogs over to meet his young gardener.

Puck loiters just beyond the sidewalk on East 26th Street, leaned up against a lamppost and all but grimacing. He tips his hat to Mateo and squints against the bright March light, beckoning Mateo over to where he waits.

Doc, he says, you gotta come quick. The old lady's sick. The girl sent me to fetch you.

Mateo hails a hack and pays the driver to convey both him and Puck to the bachelor cottage posthaste. During the ride, Puck explains that Mrs. Lopez fell over while she was washing linens with her granddaughter, straightaway into a swoon.

Mrs. Lopez said some right awful things to the little miss, Puck ventures. And now she won't even allow the girl to look after her. Could've been the fumes from the laundry soap that caused her sickness. Could've been something else. In any case, the girl's pretty worried. I ain't seen the old lady yet myself, but she must not be well-off, what with her granddaughter so anxious about her.

When the hack stops outside the bachelor cottage, Mateo fumbles to procure a tip for the driver from his wallet and all but leaps down onto the sidewalk from his seat. He bursts into the bachelor cottage shouting, Santana! Santana! Where are you? and Puck scrambles after him, directly at his heels.

Immediately, it strikes Mateo that the bachelor cottage rings with en especial quiet, even for a habitually quiet house. Oppressive silence permeates the foyer and the parlor. Mateo's heartbeat speeds, and he wonders why Santana has not yet answered him and—

In here! Santana calls from the kitchen.

Mateo enters the room to find her standing outside the maid's quarters, hugging herself and swaying on one spot. Someone has shut the double doors to the maid's quarters—a rare occurrence. Santana's eyes shine, wet, and when she speaks, she does so with a tremor in her voice.

She's very ill, but she won't let me in to see her. She fell down and vomited, but when I tried to help her stand and clean her up, she—she—cursed at me and said that I—

Santana's voice breaks, and she switches tack mid-sentence.

She won't permit me to care for her, but she'll permit you to do so. I never meant to make her sick. I didn't know it would happen. I didn't want—

Santana, Mateo interrupts, what do you mean that you made her sick? I'm certain you had nothing to do with her illness. She is stubborn, like an old cat, and her anger towards you is only really her fear and concern for herself. I shall administer to her. You mustn't worry. Stand back.

As he raises his fist to knock upon the double doors, it occurs to Mateo that he ought to send Puck away now, lest the boy witness something telling in the interactions of the next few moments—someone saying Papa or Mama or My Angel by mistake, or someone having to hold or touch someone else in a filial way. For as fond of Puck as Mateo is, Mateo can trust no one to keep his family secrets save himself.

I thank you for your help, Mr. Puckerman, Mateo says, but you must return to the outdoors to perform your work now.

But, Doc—, Puck protests.

Noah, Mateo says seriously, Mrs. Lopez is a very stubborn gentlewoman. She will not allow you to glimpse her in her indisposed state. It would not be proper. I shall call for you if I have need for you. I thank you for what you have already done, good man. I thank you very much.

For a second, Puck stands firm, holding Mateo's gaze. He wears some wanting in his eyes—perhaps because he longs for excitement and this happening could provide it for him, if Mateo would only permit him to be part of it; perhaps for some other, deeper reason. Puck glances at Santana and then at the double doors. He sighs.

All right, Doc, he says, shrugging. Suit yourself. Good luck.

And, with that, Puck takes his leave, exiting the house through the back door to the kitchen, which he opens and closes noisily. His footfalls galumph down the wooden stairs off the back porch. Mateo waits only until Puck is out of sight to knock at the double doors.

Mama, I'm coming in to see you! Mateo calls in Spanish. He reaches for the door handles and tries to turn them, but finds them locked. Mama, open the door! he shouts.

Go away! Alma replies. Leave me to die in peace!

Mateo rolls his eyes. Mama, what happened? he asks. He then turns to Santana, instructing her in a whisper: There is a skeleton key on the top shelf in the pantry. Go fetch it for me, won't you, love?

Once Santana procures the key for him, Mateo makes short work of the lock on the doors and lets himself into the maid's quarters, where he finds his mother leaned up against her sewing table, her right hand cradling her head, her left hand held at her stomach, pressed against an obvious pain. Even from the distance of a few paces, Mateo perceives her shallow breathing. He sees the orange stains at the corners of her mouth and smells bilious acid as he draws closer to her.

Santana tells me that you fainted, he says gently, starting to crouch down in front of her.

But Alma stiffens.

Santana drew for me that cursed card, and now I will die like the miserable Bradley. The Devil follows that girl! I told you that she must have a baptism, but do you ever listen to me? Never! And now I am a dead woman!

Santana stands at the threshold of the door. She shrinks.

Abuela, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Won't you forgive me? I didn't mean to make you sick—

You didn't make her sick, Mateo says brusquely. She has only eaten something which disagrees with her or contracted the influenza. It perhaps because she didn't clean out under her fingernails as well as she ought to have done after digging in the garden. I had warned her about hygiene how many times? Now we have only to make her well. Go fetch a washrag so that we can clean this stubborn woman's face, Santana.

No! Alma protests, throwing up her hands. Not her! I won't have her near me! ¡No me toques! You keep that girl away from me!

Mateo rolls his eyes, reaching out to grab his mother at her elbow and lift her from her chair. She is behaving like a child only because she feels afraid. It is not so unusual for a person recovering from a swoon to experience some disorientation and temporary change in temper. Once Mateo has cleaned her and helped to settle her stomach, she will see the foolishness in her behavior and feel very ashamed of herself. She will apologize to Santana. Until then, Mateo will simply ignore her protestations.

Come now, Mama, he says, trying to help Alma to her feet.

She wrenches violently away from him.

No! No! she shrieks. Don't you take me to that damned girl! Don't take me to that maldita! I won't go, I won't go!

Abuela—

Mama—

Damn you to hell, Matthew! Don't you see that she has killed me—that she has murdered me in cold blood!

* * *

Mateo seats Alma at a small table in the kitchen and tends to her in stony silence, wetting a rag in the sink and then wiping the vomit residue from the corners of her mouth with it. He touches her brow with the back of his hand, curious if perhaps she has a fever. When he determines that she does not, he fetches his surgeon's bag from the foyer and procures from it his stethoscope, which he uses to listen to her heart and lungs.

In truth, her pulse is perhaps a bit quick, but Mateo attributes this phenomenon to her recent agitation rather than to a malady. Her lungs are clear. Her breath is fine. The only unusual thing about her, physiologically speaking, is a certain silence below her diaphragm—the absence of the stomach-churning that Mateo might expect to hear in a patient who had vomited within the last hour or so.

Were Mateo at liberty to take Alma with him to the hospital, he might perform some chemical experiments upon samples of her blood and sputum to determine if she were perhaps deficient of certain bodily necessities, such as iron and fibrin ferment.

As it is, he can only tell her that she ought to go to sleep.

Throughout Mateo's examination of Alma, Santana stands at the threshold between the kitchen and the parlor, knotting her hands together so tightly that Mateo can't help but wonder if she will hurt her bones. Santana doesn't speak and keeps a very careful distance between herself and her grandmother. If ever Alma looks over at her, Santana shrinks and all but retreats into the next room. Her eyes are very wide and worried. She bites and bites at bottom lip.

When Mateo starts to lead Alma out of the kitchen and upstairs to bed, Santana scurries away from the door, retreating deep into the parlor and half-hiding herself behind the piano. She watches Mateo and Alma with an animal anxiety, as a dog might watch the master who had beaten him without either provocation or warning.

Mateo walks at Alma's side, holding her about the waist and under the elbow, using his own body as a shield set between the old woman and his daughter. He coddles Alma up the stairs, supporting her weight with his own, helping her not to slip. Once she reaches the landing, he sets a hand on her back.

Did you hit your head when you fell? he asks her in a low voice.

No, she answers quickly in Spanish, it is not my head that is unwell.

Since Alma seems able to walk on her own now that she is on even ground, Mateo relinquishes his hold from her, allowing her to continue forward without his help.

Upon entering her bedroom, Alma immediately begins to ready herself for sleep. Mateo follows her at a distance, taking up a post, leaned in her doorway, hands jammed in his pockets. He watches as she hobbles over to her dressing table and starts to unravel her hair from its bun, letting down her steel-gray locks one coil at a time. Mateo studies Alma's features as she cleanses her face with water from the ceramic washbasin that is part of her toilette set.

All the while, he tries not to hate Alma for treating Santana so cruelly.

After all, how often has Mateo observed patients saying the most vicious things to their loved ones and caretakers during times of duress? And how often has he himself counseled loved ones and caregivers to ignore and forget whatsoever vicious things that a patient might say to them? How often has Mateo reminded those persons that the patient is insensible and beyond him or herself and polite manners when the patient is wracked by pain and sickness?

Mateo tries to ignore, to forget, to forgive.

But he feels that old recalcitrance building a wall inside him.

Santana is his daughter, and she has never done anything to wrong anyone—and least of all to her grandmother, whom she dearly loves. It hurts Mateo that Alma could say such terrible words to Santana, even in a moment of panic and pain. It hurts him not just for Santana's sake, but for Bonnie's and for his own.

Alma has always been quick to launch wicked words.

Santana's is not the first name that Alma has cursed.

Somehow, Mateo had hoped that Alma might never say the same sorts of awful things that she once said about himself and Bonnie to his and Bonnie's daughter. Somehow, Mateo had thought that Santana might perhaps prove immune from such vitriol with her sweetness and disposition to do no evil.

Mateo still remembers standing in his mother's kitchen in Union Square and her damning him to hell, sobbing that he had ruined everything, that he had caused her anguish, that he was the worst son who ever there was, that he had wasted her life, and all for some intrusive American nigger.

So much of Mateo wants to scold Alma—to repay some of the abuse that she heaped on his poor little daughter, who has done nothing wrong to deserve her mistreatment, and on him and on Bonnie, who did nothing wrong but to love each other—but when Mateo sees the way the water clings to the furrows in Alma's face, watching her in the mirror, he realizes how aged Alma has become, how very unlike herself, how very unlike the mother of his youth. Alma is something new and old at once. She is the earth, ploughed into ruts.

The sun is still out, Alma says from nowhere, and Mateo stiffens, his eyes meeting hers in the reflection on the mirror.

Claro que sí, he answers. That it is. Of course, it is.

Her gaze lowers in the mirror. She takes up a cloth with which to dry her face, muttering to herself in Spanish as she does so. She dabs her eyes, once, twice, three times.

You see, my son, she says, I should have burned those cards when once I had the chance.

* * *

Mateo waits outside the room while his mother changes herself into bedclothes, only reentering it once she calls for him. As she clambers under the covers, he draws the curtains, cloaking the room in a false kind of gray. The hour is still far too early for sleep, and yet sleep his mother must. Mateo tucks the blankets in around her, as though she were the child and he her parent.

How are you feeling? he asks, perfunctory.

I am dying, she says.

Mateo does not believe that his mother is dying, and he doesn't believe it all the way back down the stairs. He doesn't believe it when he checks the parlor for Santana and finds the space empty. He doesn't believe it when he ventures back into the kitchen, when he hears Santana before he sees her.

The creak of floor wood and a sob.

Mateo spots Santana on her hands and knees, clad in an apron and with her shirtsleeves rolled past her elbows. Santana scrubs at the floorboards with a wet rag, stained vaguely in orange, and cries with her face broken like a cloudburst or like a marble statue cracked down its darkest veins. She all but abuses the floor with the rag, rubbing so hard that she might bore a hole clean through it to the earth from her efforts. When Santana cries, she chokes as if swallowing glass shards.

I—, she stammers, I can't get it out!

She tosses down her rag in savage frustration, sitting back so that she rests on her knees. With one hand, she wipes her face, clutches at her mouth.

Oh, precious, Mateo says, immediately flanking her and dropping down to join her on the floor. I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry.

* * *

Mateo cannot remain at the bachelor cottage for as long as he would like, as he must return to the Bellevue to finish out his shift. Still, he feels an awful guilt, leaving. He fixes Santana some tea and instructs her to send Puck for him again should Alma have need of him—should anyone have need of him.

He parts from Santana, planting kisses to her hair. He rubs his thumb over the back of her hand and tells her that all will be well, that she did the sensible thing in fetching him to the house. She expresses thanks to him through a thick throat and with watery eyes. Suddenly, she looks very tired and older than she ever has before, like this one afternoon's adventure has aged her by many years all at once.

As Mateo steps out the front door, Santana remains in the parlor. Through the bay window, Mateo watches her set down her tea. He watches her start to tidy the room around her, making frivolous changes to the arrangement of the pillows in the window, to the hanging of the curtains, to something else deeper into the room that he cannot make out from where he stands. He watches her until he cannot watch her anymore.

She is like Bonnie, who always used to busy herself whenever she felt sad.

It is as if she will drown if she stops moving, so she must always be at something, always be giving herself some task, now that she is heartbroken.

She is treading water.

Mateo hates to see her fret.

He tries to convince himself that everything will be better once Alma has had some sleep and once this trauma has run its course. Soon Alma will repent of her evil words, and Santana will cease to feel culpable for a misfortune that was in no way her own fault. Life at the bachelor cottage will resume its quiet cadence. It is only the stomach flu, and all will be well.

Mateo tries to forget the look on Santana's face.

He tries to forget the silence in his mother's gut.

Mateo performs two surgeries once he returns to the Bellevue. His successes are impressive, so much so that Wright remarks upon them to the Chair of Surgery especially on his behalf. Nevertheless, Mateo cannot keep his mind upon the matters of the hospital, for a needling worry and doubt reigns within his heart.

Mateo cannot rid himself of the image of Santana on her hands and knees, sobbing as she scrubs vomit from the floorboards. He cannot help but feel as though some small mechanism in his clockwork world has changed without him realizing it and that now his every minute runs just slightly off. For now, Mateo loses seconds. In the future, he will lose minutes. In whatever years there are ahead, he will lose hours. He will lose days.

What has happened? Where have his missing seconds gone? How can he recuperate them?

When Mateo returns to the bachelor cottage that evening, he brings with him a bottle of nickel sarsaparilla and a small bouquet of daisies—one gift for his daughter and another for his mother in her illness. Mateo finds Puck still working in the yard when he arrives at the gate, the sun not yet having set for the night. Puck trims at the hedges with a great set of iron sheers.

What's the news? Mateo asks him.

Puck shrugs. It's quiet, he says. Been quiet all day, since you left.

Mateo observes Puck lop a dead bough from the hedge. The bough twists on its descent and tangles in the coniferous foliage of the hedge, snagging on a branch and then dislodging itself, falling onto the lawn. It lands gently, without making a sound, and afterwards lies upon the grass so lightly that it does not as much as create a depression where it rests.

When Mateo enters the house, he does not bother to remove his shoes and coat and instead goes directly into the parlor, still clad in his outerwear. He discovers Santana standing with her back toward him. She leans in the doorway to the kitchen, her left shoulder and the side of her head pressed up against the wood.

It surprises Mateo to find Santana so still and silent, so exhausted despite the early hour of the evening. She appears utterly listless, like a statue moldering upon its pedestal. Her back slumps, and one arm hangs limp at her side. The other arm curls about her ribcage; she hugs herself in. Santana hears Mateo before she sees him and turns at once to meet his approach.

She won't take anything I bring to her, she says at once, now hugging both arms around her body. Not even water to drink. I tried to make her something to eat, just a little porridge, but she won't eat. She won't even see me. She says—she says—

Santana speaks in a hush, endeavoring, perhaps, to keep her voice calm—to prevent herself from crumbling. All the same, her eyes shine with wet. She cannot keep her gaze on any one thing, and especially not Mateo. It is a quiet hysteria in her, a panic almost more than a sadness.

Papa, she says suddenly, what does malagüera even mean?

The question takes Mateo aback, even more so than Santana's anxious manner.

I don't know, sweet, he replies in earnest.

He has his imaginations, and he supposes that Santana has hers, as well.

Santana laughs, not because she finds something funny but because she must either laugh or weep, and clearly she has resolved herself against weeping, as much as it is possible for her to do so. Tears begin to leak from her eyes, though she refrains from sobbing. She presses a hand to her mouth and wipes furiously at her nose and lip, embarrassed of herself.

Maybe—, she offers. Maybe if you bring the food and drink to her, sh-she'll have it. Maybe if-if it d-doesn't come from me, she'll—

She laughs again, hysterical, piteous, and shrugs in the direction of the staircase, bereft of what else to do.

If Mateo ever had seams stitching his heart together, they are all gone now, disintegrated from seeing Santana so heartbroken and yet so concerned for someone besides herself—even for someone who has treated her cruelly and who is the cause of her distress.

Mateo goes over to Santana at once, placing his hands on her shoulders, straightening her up so that she no longer rests upon the doorframe for her support.

Slowly, he unfolds her, as if she were a flower in bloom and he the sun coaxing her to open, lifting her arms away from her body, moving them from her to him, drawing her into an embrace. She submits at once, shoulders curling forward and digging into his chest. She forces out another nervous laugh, and he feels the warm damp of it through his shirt.

If Mateo could, he would offer Santana solace and comfort. He would promise Santana that her grandmother would eventually see reason. He would remind Santana that right triumphs in the end and that endings prefer to be happy, just as the storybooks say. He would tell Santana that her goodness will earn her a reward, just as if she were the Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella in a tale.

But he has always hated to lie to Santana, even in times of necessity and even when the lies would be beautiful.

Platitudes change nothing.

It is an awful lesson for a parent to teach a child—that some problems will never be resolved, even if only for pigheadedness and spite. In a way, it is a robbery, a death in itself, the idea that some ugliness will only wax uglier with the passage of time and that some bonds once broken will resist everyone's attempts to mend them.

Mateo wants to tell Santana that Alma will forgive her soon enough, but there is a dead man in the Green-Wood who taught him differently years ago.

His throat snags on what he cannot say, and he kisses Santana's hair. She is not a little girl anymore, not a child, and she will never be so again.

Shh, he soothes. Shh, now.

He doesn't know what else to say.

Santana clings to him, fingers digging deep into the wool of his coat.

* * *

In the coming days, Alma does not relent from her meanness. She does not forgive, and she does not soften. She refuses to allow Santana near her, though she will eventually take the victuals Santana prepares for her, if Santana leaves them at her nightstand while she sleeps and is gone by the time she awakens. Still, Alma does not eat so very much—only mushy foods, some water, and some tea; only one hot meal every day or so.

Mateo tries to reason with Alma, but she will not hear it. She shouts at him about cards and devils. She swears that she will die, and part of Mateo thinks, bitterly, that life might be easiest if she were right—that he would like it if she did.

Santana tells the story in parts and pieces: that Alma disliked seeing her so sad and drawn during the days following Mr. Bradley's death and so required her to lay the cards as proof of their benignity; that she read the cards at Alma's behest; that once more she drew the Death card and once more beheld an awful fate.

As is her custom, Santana blames herself for that which is beyond her control and takes every criticism which Alma heaps on her entirely to heart.

Mateo tries to reason with Santana, to tell her that she has done no wrong, but she will not hear it. Though she shows her usual deference to his lecturing, the quiver in her jaw betrays the guilt she still feels and the belief she still places in her grandmother's foul superstitions. She will not be either consoled or absolved—at least not by her papa.

With her grandmother confined to bed and adverse to her company, Santana has no one to spend her days with and so takes up a regimen of frivolous housekeeping. She dusts shelves and empties closets to which no one has paid attention in years, and every night she prepares Mateo a most sumptuous supper, which she has ready and waiting for him the instant he arrives home. As for herself, she, like her grandmother, eats very little. Over just a few short days, her face thins until it almost appears sharp.

You must eat, Mateo upbraids her.

I haven't an appetite, she declines.

Mateo's profession has accustomed him to fixing problems as he encounters them: when he senses trouble, he must first diagnose it, then administer to it, and then treat it until it is cured.

But try as he may, he cannot seem to fix the troubles at the bachelor cottage.

On the third day after Alma falls ill, Mateo appreciates a resistance in her belly when he makes a tactile examination of her. The resistance does not ply to his touch. It is as if she had swallowed a stone.

Alma complains to Mateo that applying pressure to the resistance causes her pain.

Even so, Mateo cannot make a diagnosis of Alma's ailment—not when he lacks access to the tests and apparatuses which constitute to the gold standard of care at the hospital.

Since he cannot diagnose his mother's ailment, let alone cure it, Mateo focuses his attentions on administering to his daughter, endeavoring most industriously to return a smile to her face. He brings Santana new books and old favorites from the Grolier shelves, even without her solicitation, and nickel sarsaparilla not just on Friday afternoons. He compliments the meals Santana makes. He tempts her with his best jokes. All the same, Santana is always someplace else, faraway behind her eyes, vacant and morose. Mateo cannot administer to her, not when Alma continues to curse her day and night.

There will be no cure at the bachelor cottage unless Alma can forgive Santana for that which has never been and never could be Santana's fault.

* * *

Alma begs Mateo to send for a priest so that she might receive her last rites, but Mateo denies her entreaties. He tells his mother not to be dismal. Though she complains to him of his callousness, Mateo insists to himself that he is only being practical—that Alma is only sick and not dying, so it would be premature to make preparations for her death in any wise.

Mateo doesn't want to cause Santana unnecessary upset by bringing a priest to the house. He doesn't want to stoke Alma's delusions of impending death by humoring them. He will not have a priest in his home.

He also cannot deny to himself that some secret part of him supposes that the kind of woman who would curse her own granddaughter to Hell deserves to believe that she herself will die without unction.

* * *

Alma wanes like the moon, turning first impossibly thin and then altogether emaciated. Soon, her vomiting becomes a regular occurrence, even just after drinking water or eating a mouthful of porridge. When she is in pain, she howls, doglike. Mateo attempts to administer her a tincture of opium, but she cannot keep it down long enough for it to have any benefit on her health.

Now Mateo sees now that Alma was right: she is dying.

He does not know if it is for disease or her stubbornness, though.

On the Wednesday before Easter, Mateo arrives home at night, his surgeon's bag stuffed full of medicines pilfered from the hospital stores, including the new analgesic, aspirin.

When Mateo steps through the front door and into the foyer, he immediately smells something noxious—smoke—and rushes into the parlor.

Santana! he shouts, dread flooding his breast.

He does not require much searching to find her.

Santana had been asleep upon the couch, curled up like a dormouse in its bower, but she wakes at once when Mateo clambers into the room, sitting bolt upright and looking about, frantic.

The air in the parlor appears hazy, with smoke pouring out from the kitchen, thick and dark, the scent of burnt animal fat underlying it.

The stove! Santana yelps, leaping up and looking toward the kitchen.

Mateo charges forward, waving his arms before him in order to clear the air. When he enters the kitchen, he sees at once the trouble: a skillet left upon the lighted stove, its base seared red-hot and its contents charred to blackened sludge.

With the greatest haste, Mateo darts to the sink and snatches up the nearest wetted rag, which he wraps around his hand before plucking up the handle to the skillet. His touch produces steam, and his palm almost singes, even despite his precaution.

He moves in a trice, all but tossing the skillet into the sink, submerging it into standing water. More steam spouts up, scalding the underside of his chin. He unlatches the kitchen window, letting it open, again waving his arms to fan the smoke from the room.

Before Mateo can stop her, Santana enters the kitchen behind him and quickly works a cover lifter to remove the burning hotplate. In what seems to be a single motion, Santana flings the plate aside onto the back of the stove and pours tepid water from a kettle into the flames of the stove belly.

A jettison of steam wider, taller, hotter, and more vicious than any Mateo has yet created erupts into the air, and Santana only just manages to dodge it, avoiding what might have been a serious scalding.

Condensation collects on the ceiling above the stove in beads and wet expanses. Smoke and steam mingle in the air, contorting against each other, serpentine, before the breeze from the window dispels them.

I'm so sorry, Papa, Santana babbles, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry! I just rested my eyes for a moment. I must have fallen asleep. I didn't mean—

Mateo waves off Santana's apology, not wanting her to languish in guilt for one second longer than she has already done so.

I'm just glad you are all right and that no one came to any harm, he says quickly.

He offers Santana a smile for reassurance, but though she smiles back at him, she does not seem entirely well. Her face appears drawn and her eyes are dull. Even for her recent excitement, she is almost listless, like she could fall back to sleep at any instant.

Mateo reaches out, lightly touching her arm. Why don't you go wash up? he says. I'll take care to prepare the supper tonight.

Santana acts surprised. You prepare the supper? she asks, uncertain as to whether her papa has either the ability or the wherewithal to follow through on his offer.

Mateo chuckles.

Yes, I. Don't worry—I did not always make it home to your grandparents' house for supper when I was at college and in medical school. I hadn't a housemaid or anyone who lived with me, so I cooked for myself, even right here in this very kitchen. I am quite capable, if you'll allow.

Santana nods, still wary but willing to permit the experiment. Thank you, Papa, she says. And again, I'm sorry.

She takes her leave from the kitchen, and Mateo listens to her footfalls on the floorboards, pattering through the parlor and up the stairs to the washroom. He hasn't any idea what meal she had intended to prepare before he arrived home, so he supposes that he shall prepare whatever seems both handiest and best, never mind the intended menu.

Honestly, it surprises him that Santana would fall asleep in the midst of her chores. She is usually so very careful, so conscientious.

Without meaning to do so, Mateo thinks of Bonnie and how she worked herself into a fatigue in the months prior to her death, trying to cater to and please the insufferable Alma.

He winces and closes his eyes.

For the next half-hour, Mateo hurriedly fixes a meal for himself and Santana: codfish from the icebox broiled in a pan and served with onion custard.

It isn't like most of the Boricua dishes that their family usually eats for supper, and Mateo isn't certain that Santana will even find it enticing to her tastes. He hopes that she does, both because it is the best dish which he knows how to prepare and because it is a thing in which he feels a particular and strange pride.

The dish belongs to Bonnie and to Bonnie's people. She taught Mateo how to make it after she first came to live with him at the bachelor cottage. In a way, it was her wedding gift to him—teaching him how to cook something different from and better than his habitual bachelor food.

Mateo remembers laughing with Bonnie in the kitchen, her scolding him for dipping his fingers in the custard while she tried to show him how to handle the pan and sear the fish as he ought. He remembers burning his first solo attempt, undercooking the second, and over-seasoning the custard for the third. He remembers Bonnie being so patient with him—a perfect teacher. He remembers flavors upon flavors.

Mateo calls for Santana when he has the dish ready.

But he doesn't receive a reply.

She isn't in the parlor, so he ventures upstairs, searching for her. He discovers her in her bedroom, laid out upon her bed and not even under the blankets. Her feet curl beneath her skirt and her face rests against the crook of her elbow. She doesn't stir when Mateo enters the room but breathes deeply and in steady waves, wearing a stitch in her brow, even at rest.

Mateo had felt some excitement at the prospect of sharing something from Bonnie with Santana, but now he cannot bring himself to wake Santana from her rest, even to have her supper. Instead, he takes his meal in quiet and spends the rest of the night tending to his mother, allowing Santana to sleep. When he finally quits his mother's company, the house is dark and the clock on the wall has just chimed eleven o'clock. He feels strange, leaving the house without bidding Santana farewell, but she is still in her bedroom, fast away in dreams.

Goodnight, my love, he whispers standing at her doorframe, imagining her through the darkness though he cannot perceive her form.

* * *

Mateo devotes the weekend to caring for his mother and daughter and spends all day on Saturday at the bachelor cottage, arriving there at just after six o'clock in the morning and taking his leave only after the clock tolls ten at night.

He bids Santana farewell, leaving her upstairs in her room and descending down to the lower level of the house. He goes about gathering up his things from the downstairs—his pipe, his hat, his overcoat, his surgeon's bag, emptied of its medicines now that Mateo has tended so thoroughly to Alma.

Before departing the house, Mateo lingers for a few moments, wondering where he left the evening newspaper and if he ought to go fetch it so that he might bring it back to his apartment with him and finally have the chance to read it.

It is then when Mateo hears it: the sound of some disturbance coming from upstairs.

Worried, Mateo reenters the parlor from the foyer. He strains to discern what happens above him and hears a scuffing sound, voices, Santana and Alma speaking to each other in rapid Spanish.

No, not speaking—shouting.

His heartbeat hurries in his breast.

He mounts the bottommost stair, listening so that he can pick out individual words amongst the rush.

Abuela, Santana implores, you have to let me help you!

You have done enough, God damn you! Alma shrieks. Don't you touch me! Don't you dare!

I don't want you to fall—, Santana tries.

I can do it myself! You keep your accursed hands far from me! Do not you touch me! Stay away!

Mateo starts up the stairwell at a jog but only makes it halfway before he hears a clatter and a cry. His heart seams tug taut. Santana yelps, Abuela! and he thinks to himself, This is the moment, without knowing precisely what he means by those words in his own mind.

He finds his daughter and mother in the latter's bedroom, door propped ajar. Alma lies tangled in her bedding, half on the floor and half hanging over her bed. She wears an expression of exquisite agony, with her mouth contorted into a long, horrible o. Her shoulders hunch as she tries to pull herself up, to return to the mattress from which she has obviously fallen. She drags her knees along the floorboards, struggling to extricate herself from her sheets. Her bedclothes barely cover her nakedness. She is disheveled, anguished.

Santana stands at her back, reaching out to spot her movements but not daring to actually touch her. Tears spangle Santana's eyes, and Santana's mouth moves though no sound passes by her lips.

The room reeks of urine and sick.

Mateo has seldom viewed an uglier scene, even in all his years working at the hospital.

What happened? he demands, going over and setting hands on Alma's ribcage, helping her to stand and then lifting her back onto her mattress, all with one heave.

Alma gives a disgruntled yelp. Matthew! You mustn't be here! It is not proper for a son to see his mother this way! Oh God, deliver me! Saint Joseph, give up prayers!

She fights as Mateo pushes her shoulders back, lying her down against her pillow. She scratches at his arms and pries at his hands as he attempts to examine her, to probe her belly and search her bones for injuries. Now tears spangle her eyes as well.

She didn't want you to know, Santana confesses in English, hovering at Mateo's shoulder. But she won't let me help her. She doesn't want you to be here—she said she doesn't want—

Santana, Mateo says in English, gentle but direct. Won't you please go draw a bath for your grandmother? I shall tend her here in the meanwhile. It is all right, sweeting.

For a second, Santana hesitates, halted by her trepidations and her competing impulses.

On the one hand, she does not want to cause trouble, and she fears that by allowing Mateo to glimpse what Alma has bidden her to conceal that she already done just that. On the other hand, she durst not to ignore a directive from her papa; she wants to obey him, to do as he has told her to do and to do so at once.

She vacillates between saying too much and too little, between inciting her grandmother to feel more anger and resentment toward her and doing something to actually help the old woman.

Ultimately, her obedience to and ceaseless trust in Mateo prevail in her.

Yes, Papa, Santana says quietly, retreating from the room.

In the next half-hour, Mateo tends to his mother. Despite her protests, he undresses her, divesting her of her soiled bedclothes and carrying her to the washroom naked, lowering her into the bathtub. The water is warm and not too high. Mateo sponges his mother clean with soap.

Alma weeps all the while, keening that she does not want to burden Mateo and that it is improper for a son to see his mother thusly indisposed.

Oh, what would his father think if his father were alive today?

Alma cries, pathetic like a kitten, pathetic and in little mewling whimpers. She seems smaller than she ever has seemed before, almost shrunken, somehow.

Throughout the ordeal, Santana waits outside the washroom door. When Mateo ducks his head into the hallway in search of a towel, she has one at the ready. She hands it over to Mateo with nary a word, not daring to meet his eyes, and then retreats back around the corner at once, making herself scarce. Santana takes caution so that Alma does not catch sight of her, like a shadow avoiding long lights.

When Mateo emerges from the washroom, Alma wrapped in the towel and gathered in his arms, Santana isn't in the hallway or anywhere about. Mateo carries Alma back into the bedroom and sees that Santana has already stripped and remade the bed, cleared away all the messed linens, and set out one of her own nightdresses for Alma to wear.

She has also left the windows open, letting fresh air and springtime moonlight into the room.

By the time Mateo tucks her into bed, Alma has lapsed into a stony silence, too exhausted and embarrassed of what has transpired to speak. She keeps her jaw clamped closed and bears a vacancy in her eyes. She is somewhere miles away, nowhere near to anything or anyone at the bachelor cottage.

Mateo's first impulse is to feel angry at his mother for her maledictions and for her resistance to help, but he swallows that impulse down, reminding himself that she must feel both very frightened and very ashamed, her body having betrayed her. He resolves to speak with her frankly on the morrow, after she has had some rest and a chance to check herself. For now, he leans down and kisses her on the forehead, bidding her a simple goodnight.

She does not reply to him and flinches at his touch.

When he turns down the electric lamps and steps outside the room, he hears her sigh into the darkness, bereaved for reasons that he cannot bring himself to think about.

Downstairs, Santana is in the kitchen. A kettle heats upon the stove, and she stands at the sink, scrubbing at leftover dishes from supper. A jar of milk waits, defrosting, on the counter beside a teapot. Santana pauses from her work when she hears Mateo approach behind her but does not turn to look at him.

Instead, she says very quietly, She didn't want you to know.

A pause.

Is she asleep now?

Soon she will be, Mateo posits, though part of him supposes that his mother may not sleep at all tonight, that she will be too afraid to do so.

Santana nods as if she knows what Mateo daren't say aloud. She takes up a dishrag from the countertop, wiping the soapsuds away from her hands and forearms. Her movements are slow and almost weak—like she can scarcely manage to complete them for exhaustion. Even after she is clean, she does not dare to turn about. For a long while, she seems someplace else, and then she speaks, leaning against the countertop.

I wish that she would die, she says even more quietly than before.

The words tumble from her lips, unpremeditated, frank, and Mateo doesn't know what to make of them.

His first impulse is to laugh because there is something of the absurd in the moment, in the very supposition that Santana might speak words even the least bit potentially cruel. Does Santana really mean that she wishes her grandmother dead? Surely not. She must have misspoken, or perhaps Mateo must have misunderstood. Surely, Santana must mean something more altruistic, less base.

Did she intend to say, as some tenderhearted caregivers sometimes do, that she wishes her grandmother dead so that her grandmother will not have to suffer? Is that it? Is that what Santana has confessed? Has she wished her grandmother peace?

Whatever laughter was in Mateo chokes and strangles, jackknifing into what wants to be a cry.

No.

He swallows it down, swallows down another notion—another potential meaning. He does not want to think that Santana might have voiced a wish more intimately familiar to him, more callous and more desperate.

Over these last eighteen years, Mateo has become accustomed to seeing Bonnie's yearning to please in Santana and perhaps even Alma's stubbornness in her, as well. He has also learned to recognize in Santana that which is innately her own, her little cautions and her quiet thoughts. But what he has never liked to see—and what he has seldom seen in her until now—are traces of himself, manifestations of his recalcitrance, his brashness.

That he may have witnessed not just one of his own traits but one of his own faults in her—that is what so unnerves him now.

He knows precisely how he meant it when he considered that he wanted his mother to die just a few short weeks ago.

He is too afraid to ask Santana if she means the same.

As she always does, Santana senses what is in Mateo. She meets Mateo's eyes and reads how she has startled him. Even so, she does not rescind the wish that she has spoken. She holds Mateo's gaze, her meaning, whatever it may be.

The kettle on the stove whistles noisily, and Santana goes to retrieve it.

You might bring a cup of tea up to her room before you go. If she wakes during the night, it will be nice for her to have it, Santana says placidly, as if there had been no break in the conversation—as if she had not just expressed a secret and potentially fatal wish aloud.

She pours water from the kettle into the teapot with her usual carefulness, and the smell of hot, damp leafage wafts across the room. While the tea steeps, Santana procures a teacup from the cabinet and pours into it the milk from the counter. She measures out perfection portions. She sets the cup on the saucer, just so, and the china clinks.

Mateo chooses to believe what he prefers about her.

Of course, he says. Of course, of course.

She is not like him. She never has been so.

He conveys the tea to Alma's room and finds the old woman pretending to sleep. He doesn't disturb her, and neither does he linger. Instead, he returns to the downstairs and bids Santana goodnight, commending the poor girl to take her rest. It is his hope that Alma will not require any of Santana's care until the next morning. It is already after midnight, after all.

Maybe Alma will just sleep.

The street is utterly dark, the yard calm, the house quiet, sinking low in its foundations.

Mateo walks the whole way home, chasing after his own shadow underneath the streetlamps.

He supposes that it has something to do with landscape—that he had thought he knew the topography of Santana's heart well, that he had not only memorized what existed in it but that he could also perhaps anticipate how it would evolve, unfold, and change.

Now Santana has proven to him that his idea of her is off, that he is not so familiar with her secret rooms and partitioned places as he had once supposed.

She has proven that she can change in ways that Mateo cannot anticipate.

Mateo finds himself taking a new route to his building, turning down streets which he might normally avoid, ducking across crosswalks and down thoroughfares which he recognizes only by name. When he reaches his apartment, he falls hard into bed and sleeps at once. He can only hope that a quiet night passes at the bachelor cottage, during which Alma and Santana can sleep both well and long.

He cannot know if they do so and has no doubt that Santana won't tell him even if they don't.

* * *

On the morrow, it is Easter Sunday, and Mateo arrives early at the bachelor cottage. He prepares porridge for his mother while the city wakes, readying itself to make holiday benedictions. When he ascends the stairs and enters Alma's room, he finds her sitting up awake in her bed, her eyes wide open, her expression hard and flinty.

Buenos días, he greets her, sitting down on the edge of her bed, depressing the mattress with his weight.

Alma grunts at him but does not reply.

I have brought you some breakfast, Mateo says placidly, indicating the warm bowl in his hands. I would like for you to have a few bites of it so that you might recuperate your strength. I would also like it if after your breakfast you would apologize to Santana for those wretched words you spoke to her last night.

Alma does not look at him. She shifts her gaze out the window, to the first hints of bluing sky apparent beneath the sunrise. She glances at the tree branches visible in the yard. Her lips thin, and she clasps her hands together more tightly.

Mateo had intended to reason with his mother and to exercise patience in his attempts to correct her behavior, but seeing her stubbornness hardens something in the pit of his belly. Alma's eyes appear empty, and she is devoid of any shame or remorse.

Scarcely human.

Mateo's jaw sets.

For God's sake, Mama! he exclaims, hoping perhaps to startle Alma with his volume, to shock her into speaking.

His tactic does not work. She says nothing, does not flinch or react one whit.

Isn't it Easter? he harps, appealing to an authority that she might honor above his words alone. Did not that Christ whom you worship rise from the dead for the sake of your miserable soul today? Has not he commanded you to forgive and to be charitable? Will you not say something kind to Santana, if not for her then for your Christ?

Silence prevails, and Mateo waits to see if Alma won't break her silence—say anything—or even show some response, the smallest rejoinder.

She does not.

She remains still.

She doesn't turn her head.

She doesn't speak or answer him.

If she feels concern for the safety of her soul, she says nothing of it.

If any part of her wishes to repent of her meanness towards Santana, she does not betray it in her expression.

There is nothing there, no crack in her granite façade. She is as resolute as a cliff face, unchanged over millennia, dead-set against the onslaught of the lapping sea. Were she not so obviously respiring, Mateo might wonder if she were still alive, if there were anything inside of her that moved or worked at all.

The hard feeling in Mateo's belly sinks like an anchor, and he suddenly regrets allowing his mother to live under his roof as he has not done for many years.

He stands, taking up the porridge bowl with him, clutching it so tightly that he might crush into shards it between his two hands.

He thinks of Santana, wasting away from worry, pining for the forgiveness that her grandmother will not extend to her, and he thinks of thinks of Bonnie, who did the same when Santana was just a baby. He remembers all those times when he was a boy and ran to Alma, excited to show her some discovery he had made on his outdoor adventures or one of his achievements from school or from his sporting in the streets. He remembers how Alma could never muster any true enthusiasm for those attainments of his that he himself most valued.

He remembers how Alma has never loved his precious things.

It seems so strange to hate her when she is dying and when there are birdsongs in the air and church bells ringing in the Resurrection all across the city.

But.

Sometimes, he says as he starts to leave the room, I hope that you are right and that there is a Hell where you will shortly find yourself, suffering loveless forever, as you deserve. She is a good girl, Mama, and she has never wanted anything except to somehow please you. She can't do that, though, can she? Because you won't ever allow her to do it. How I was a fool to think that I could trust you to care for her as you ought! Good day, Mama. Enjoy your Easter.

When Mateo reaches the downstairs, it startles him to find Santana awake, wrapped in her dressing robe and preparing coffee on the stove. She sits at the small table in the corner and frets at a strand of her hair, trying to make it lie flat upon her head, to work it back into place after having dislodged it in her sleep. Without a mirror to look in, her movements are clumsy; she is distracted. She greets Mateo with a mirthless, tired smile.

She was up five times last night, she says. I think she is in pain, Papa. Have you any more aspirin to give her?

Mateo wonders if Santana overheard any of his shouting at Alma—if it was what woke her. Surely, Santana must have heard it when she entered into the hallway. It surprises him that Santana can behave so calmly, knowing what awfulness has already transpired today concerning her person.

He means to answer Santana's question about the aspirin, but instead he says, Would you like to go out in the garden with me today? You're reading Melville, aren't you? We could read together and take in the spring air.

Santana hesitates, undoubtedly thinking of Alma and the care that Alma requires, and yet Mateo sees it—that wanting in Santana's eyes.

After a long while, Santana nods.

After I dress, she says, of course. And after—

After. Yes, of course, Mateo agrees.

* * *

Mateo takes to spending all his free time at the bachelor cottage. He ceases to attend his Grolier meetings, only stopping by the clubhouse for a few minutes at a time to collect books for Santana on his way to and from work. He cancels all his personal office hours and travels from the Bellevue to Gramercy Park every day during his lunchtime. He stays much later at the house than ever he has before, even when Santana was a baby, sometimes until long after midnight. When the weekends come, he informs his landlord that he will be traveling outside the city and sleeps over at the bachelor cottage in the spare bedroom.

But even these many extra hours that he spends with his family per week somehow do not seem enough.

Alma's condition deteriorates most rapidly. Whereas before she had encountered difficulty with walking, now it happens that walking becomes impossible for her, and she must remain confined to her bed. She ingests nothing but tea and sometimes just the barest broth. When Mateo lifts her, she screams that his touch does her harm. For some parts of the day, she stews in monolithic silence; for other parts of the day, she weeps as a little child. She passes nothing but water, and her belly hardens and bloats.

Santana wants very much to help Alma and feels guilty for Alma's sorry state, Mateo can tell, but Alma will not permit Santana to linger near her for more than a few minutes at a time. It is all Santana can do just to brew tea and continually wash and rewash linens—to offer aid in out-of-sight ways.

Mateo does not despair that Alma will die—not when she clearly longs to do so and when the world might be a less miserable place without her—but he despair of what might happen when die she finally does.

What if she expires during one of those daytime hours when he isn't at the bachelor cottage? What if it happens when Santana is alone with her? Even if he is there to witness and preside over Alma's passing, will he be able to comfort Santana concerning it? Will Santana even allow herself to be comforted?

She already blames herself for Alma's illness and misery.

Certainly, she will blame herself for Alma's death, as well.

Mateo fears that he will not be able to dissuade Santana from her guilt or to soothe her in her sorrowfulness. He fears that somehow his love will not be enough to fix in Santana what Alma may have broken. Mateo has never been able to abide it when Santana feels hurt or sad. He can scarcely bear to imagine that there might be some hurt or sadness that will remain in Santana always and never be allayed, no matter what he does on Santana's behalf, no matter how he works against it.

Anticipating Alma's death and what will come of it preoccupies Mateo, and he carries heavy thoughts with him both when he is at the bachelor cottage and when he is away from it.

Though Mateo takes more carriage, streetcar, and hack rides nowadays than ever he has before, all of them seem to pass by him as fleetingly as comet tails, though duller and less distinct. It seems he never has enough time to think of how he will speak to Santana once Alma dies, of what he might say to her.

He failed so awfully at discoursing with Santana when Bonnie died and in all the years afterwards. What will he say now, when Santana is too old to think of death as sleep, when she can understand what is permanent, when she knows that his kisses cannot make better every ill? His thoughts chase themselves in circles, swirl, eddy, say nothing straight.

At the hospital, Stewart, Fowler, and Wright attempt to engage Mateo in their usual friendly and jocund conversation. They ask him his opinion on President McKinley requesting a war resolution from the Congress and on the poor performance of the Giants ball club throughout this, the 1898 season. He can scarcely answer them. He mutters some reply.

Maybe Matty has found himself a pretty, young mistress after all, Stewart ribs. Maybe that's why he's so thoughtful. I know that pensive look and have worn it more than once myself!

You have never looked pensive, you dog, Fowler jibes at Stewart.

Mateo must mightily endeavor to force out the briefest laugh.

In the successive days at the bachelor cottage, Alma's breathing hampers, and Mateo diagnoses that the fluid on her stomach has flooded into her lungs. Her skin yellows and turns wax-thin, and she loses so much weight that Mateo mustn't even strain to lift her anymore. Her pores emit a putrid, septic odor. Something rots deep inside her.

She weeps from all the pain.

When Mateo attends her in her suffering moments, he sets aside his resentment towards her, placing it on a high shelf within his heart so that he does not touch it. But then he steps outside her bedroom to wash his hands or smoke his pipe and hears her shriek from the bedroom, cursing when Santana brings to her fresh blankets or hot tea or tries to speak to her, even in brief and kindly, and suddenly the recalcitrance crusts over in him anew.

Mateo finds Santana sitting in the bay window, no book in her lap and neither even beside her, nothing nearby to provide her with entertainment or even distraction. Santana casts her gaze out into the yard, but Mateo knows, somehow, that she does not see it.

She looks out at something else, something very far from here.

Did she ever really love me? she asks in a small voice, not daring to look up at him, though savvy to his presence. How can she—? I'm the same person now that I was a month ago, aren't I? I—I haven't changed?

Perhaps she means those last words as a declaration, but they are not.

They are a question.

And Santana is of such an age that her papa does not know how to answer all her questions anymore.

Mateo stares at Santana where she sits, memorizing the way her shadow casts crooked beneath the bay window in the yellow afternoon light. She looks so very much like Bonnie today, and, for the first time, the resemblance frightens Mateo, as if he had seen a ghost.

It won't be long now, he says.

Santana nods but doesn't reply.

She knows how he means.

* * *

The last several days bring the worst of it.

Alma wanes and weakens, to the point that she can no longer speak. She lies abed, totally passive, hovering between sleep and waking, struggling to breathe. Mateo appreciates râles in both of her lungs. Even the smallest sip of tea induces her to vomit and gag.

Mateo tells Santana that perhaps now would be the ideal time to enter Alma's room and speak peace to the old woman, and, though nervous, Santana agrees to do it, wiping furiously at her eyes with the lace on her sleeve. Mateo waits at the door while Santana goes to sit on the bed.

Abuela—? Santana whispers, reaching out to brush Alma's wrist most gently with her fingertips.

It happens in an instant.

Alma lashes out, seizing Santana around the hand, crushing Santana's fingers in a tight fist. Alma has her back to Mateo, so he cannot see her face, but he knows she must look wild, crazed. She is as an animal caught in a trap, battling off a perceived attacker through she will surely die, despite her defenses. Santana yelps, and Mateo rushes from where he stands to intervene.

Santana tries to wrench herself away from Alma's hold, but Alma clings to her so ferociously that Santana's knuckles blanch and fingers redden under the pressure. Mateo swoops onto the scene, pushing Santana back and ripping Alma's hold from her. Unhand her! he roars at Alma, and Santana yelps again and stumbles backwards. In that violent instant, Mateo sees that Alma's fingernails have sliced Santana—that the old woman has drawn blood in three vivid, red, crescent cuts to Santana's wrist.

It surprises Mateo to feel strength in his mother's arm as he has not felt it since before she became ill or maybe even ever. It is adrenal, desperate. She wears her most wrathful expression, though she is still silent, speechless, and unable to produce sound. Rage surges through Mateo's body like whitewater on a river, and suddenly he wants to wrench Alma's arm, to deal some pain to her as she has dealt it to Santana.

At Mateo's back, Santana has sought refuge by the window. She cradles her hurt hand near her belly. Until today, no one had ever done violence to her in her life.

It vexes Mateo to think that his mother should purposefully injure Santana and stirs up something in him—some primal reflex to protect and avenge his child against anyone who would harm her. For an instant, he towers above his mother, reared up and with his hand still wrapped around her frail wrist. His jaw clenches, and he feels his own strength much greater than hers, even in her moment of fraught aggression.

If he squeezed, he could crush her bones. If he twisted, he could snap them.

But he doesn't.

If only for one instant, he sees it: confusion darting behind Alma's eyes, like a fish through murky waters. He knows then that he is angry at a person who is no longer present. He feels the strength recede from her. Her animal instant ends, and so does his. Mateo deflates, shrinks down. He sets Alma's arm down beside her on the bed, relinquishing his hold on it, though his heart still pounds out war in his breast. He breathes heavily, and she wheezes.

Mateo turns back to Santana.

Come, sweeting. Come, come. Let's away. Come here. You're all right. I've got you, he soothes, leading Santana away from the windowsill, bringing her with him past Alma's bed and out into the hall. He steers her toward the washroom, guiding her right up to the sink, his hands upon her shoulders, him acting as her keel.

I didn't mean—, Santana blurts as Mateo starts the sink faucet to running, turning the copper knob perhaps somewhat harder than necessary.

I know, Mateo says quickly, directing her wrist under the water.

Santana winces slightly.

I know, Mateo says again.

* * *

Following the incident, Mateo does not permit Santana to see Alma again. He becomes Alma's sole caretaker, staying all through the weekend, and even sleeping in the old chair in the corner of Alma's bedroom. Whenever he enters the bedroom after even a brief absence from it, he smells not just sepsis but death, Alma rotting from the insides out though she as of yet still draws breath. She is decaying, almost ended. The stench follows Mateo through what few dreams that he has.

In the following days, Alma's breathing becomes a battle, with each inhalation an uncertainty for her, striven for and only fleetingly obtained. Mateo injects Alma with opiates using a hypodermic syringe in order to abate her pain and grant her some serenity, but still he sees her pained and knows that there is nothing much that he can do to help her now.

He has only to wait.

Though she maintains her distance from Alma, Santana still somehow manages to hover around Mateo, in her own way, lingering outside the bedroom in the hall, listening at the door as he works, and following him whenever he moves from the upstairs to the downstairs while she is awake and dressed.

Sometimes Mateo sees ghost tracks of saline dried upon her cheeks and sleeplessness staining her eyes dark and tired. Sometimes very late at night, he hears her trying to muffle sobs into the goose-down feathers of her pillow.

Like his mother and his daughter, Mateo has battles to fight.

Caring constantly for Alma exhausts him, and he must make war against any sleep that is either too long or too deep. He is not as young a man as once he was and cannot do as he once did during medical school and his internship, when he used to remain alert and on his feet sometimes for more than one whole day at a time.

Mateo must also strive against crossness—to keep his temper in check though he feels wrung out, restless, and even ill-used.

On Saturday night, Mateo helps to roll Alma onto her back while she sleeps and then pauses to recuperate himself, looking out her open bedroom window into the darkness and taking in the cool, spring air. To his surprise, he sees golden light escaping through the aperture in the shed door, spilling into the yard like drink from an overturned goblet.

The hour is far from decent.

It must be nearly two or three o'clock in the morning.

For an instant, Mateo's temper soars in his chest, and he wants to charge outside to harangue Puck for staying up too late and showing such poor behavior, though any one of the neighbors could look into the yard and see what he was up to at once.

Didn't Puck and Mateo have an agreement that Puck would comport himself like a gentleman? Wasn't Puck to turn in early to bed and turn out early to rise every day?

Mateo only barely restrains himself from stomping down the stairs and out-of-doors to haul the boy out from the shed and force him to make some accounting for his misbehavior. Mateo must remind himself that it is not his gardener who has truly disappointed him of late. The boy is only enjoying his youth, and what right has Mateo to disparage him for doing so?

Puck is free, as he ought to be.

Mateo's war is not his.

How strange it is that the closer Alma draws to death, the less Mateo wants death for her. Though at first he wished and even willed that his mother would expire quickly, now he works most strenuously to preserve her life for just a little while longer, if he can. Mateo does not seek to prolong Alma's life for Alma's own sake, for he harbors no doubts that she would object to his efforts if she retained even the smallest voice left by which to do so. Rather, he administers to Alma for Santana's sake and for his own.

In the one case, he hopes to afford Santana time to prepare herself for what must surely be. In the other case, he hopes to afford himself time to work out what he must say to pacify Santana's guilt, to help her navigate her grief.

Seventeen years have passed since Bonnie died, and Mateo still has no inkling as to how to talk to his daughter regarding death.

And so Mateo runs himself ragged trying to spare Santana—to spare himself—the necessity of having to do so for just a little while longer, keeping Alma propped up so that she can breathe; warming her extremities, which have turned icy and rigid; combating the fever which assaults her head and belly with wetted cloths and aspirin dissolved under her tongue.

On Sunday evening, Mateo dozes for just a little while and wakes suddenly to an oddness, to a certain feeling that there is something amiss within the room. It takes him only half-a-second to realize that the oddness is silence—to realize that he can no longer hear his mother's battered respiration.

Leaping up at once from the chair where he had slept, Mateo touches his hands to his mother's neck, searching out a pulse. He finds that she still has one—just no breath to sustain it—and, with panic electric in his bones and blood, he acts almost without thinking, snatching up a pitcher of ice water from the nightstand and tossing its contents, with a flip of his wrist, directly onto his mother's face.

At once, Alma splutters, gags, revives, and gasps down a desperate breath. She stares up at the ceiling past Mateo's head with wide, white eyes, stricken, no longer able to see either her son or anything or to know what has just happened to her.

She trembles after what her body registers as a near-drowning.

Mateo watches the water trace the wrinkles on her face, soaking into the dimpled pillow beneath her heavy head and saturating her bed sheets. A single ice chip melts from her cheek to the hair curled around her ear like a teardrop, disappearing into the heat of her. Mateo breathes as desperately as she does. When he touches her neck again, he finds her pulse stampede-wild, stronger than it has been in days. He feels her throat expand and contract as she makes use of air, as she yet lives.

Son-of-a-bitch, he curses, trailing his hand from her neck to her shoulder, touching at the seam of her nightdress and rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger as if he were still her little child, seeking whatever comfort she might grant him.

Over the course of the next several hours, Alma nearly stops breathing three times more, but Mateo always restores her, returning the breath to her lungs by producing various shocks to her biologic systems—by pinching the soft skin on the inside of her elbow until the pain stirs up a voiceless yelp in her throat, by pounding her chest once with his fist, by placing smelling salts beneath her nostrils until the ammonia gas pricks her back to life.

After each new revival effort, Mateo feels increasingly beleaguered and inadequate, like he is the last man on the field and his foes will soon overrun him.

In-between each emergent episode, Mateo wonders what he ought to do. Should he tell Santana that her grandmother is dying now or wait until it happens? Should he bring Santana into the room to allow her a goodbye or not? Mateo longs for Bonnie's sensible counsel, for Bonnie to advise him how to proceed in regards to their daughter. Santana is just down the hall, in her bedroom. Does she know that it is happening now? Can she sense death in the house?

Mateo looks up at the ceiling, wiping his brow along his sleeve. He should have anticipated that this would happen—that Santana would learn to love Alma only to have Alma reject her in the end.

As the hours toll ever later, Mateo does not allow himself to sleep. Around midnight, Santana knocks on the bedroom door and talks to Mateo through it.

Would you like some coffee, Papa? she asks in her most timid, little voice.

Just leave the kettle on the stove, he answers, remaining where he stands. I shall come down for it in a while.

He expects Santana to make some reply to him, but she doesn't. He hears her weight shift on the floorboards, hears her peel away from the door. For a second, he wonders if he oughtn't to call out to her—to invite her into the room so that she can see how small her monster looks confined to a deathbed, so that she can know this harmlessness, this benignity which comes just before the final breath for herself.

But he doesn't.

He is afraid.

When Alma stops breathing again sometime after three o'clock in the morning, Mateo swears to himself that this will be the end—that he will do no more to prolong her mortal being and instead allow her to expire finally in her sleep. It will not be so terrible for Santana to wake up to such news, will it? Won't it be quieter, in a way, having Alma pass while the world lies still in its dreams?

Mateo holds his breath as his mother holds hers.

He waits, counts silences.

When after many seconds, his lungs begin to burn, Mateo inhales at last, and still his mother does not. He waits several more seconds. He thinks to himself, It has happened, and closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. For a split-instant, Mateo wonders if he misses her, if any part of his heart mourns his mother's loss.

But then he hears another gasping breath, and Alma is not dead yet after all.

Another breath comes afterward and another and another and another, until Mateo can no longer number them, and the clock on the wall ticks ever onward.

Then Mateo is with Bonnie. They sit downstairs at the small table in the kitchen, sharing codfish with onion custard from a single plate, holding hands under the table. The stench of death hangs in the air. Santana is missing, and it is a problem that she is missing, and Mateo and Bonnie know that it is a problem, but somehow they do not search for her. There is something they have forgotten, and the kitchen becomes the kitchen at the old house in Union Square. Bonnie isn't welcome in it, but still they dine.

We have to find her, Bonnie says.

What if we don't? Mateo asks.

But Bonnie takes another mouthful of fish from their plate, peeling feathery white flesh from flimsy white bone and biting it deftly between her white teeth.

She doesn't give an answer. She chews and waits for Mateo to take action.

This time, sunlight wakes Mateo—a brilliant brassy gleam slicing through the windowpane in a shaft. It cuts through Mateo's eyelids, causing him to jolt. Immediately, he listens, and when he does so, he hears a sound familiar to him from years of doctor's training.

The death rattle.

When he rises from his chair and flanks his mother's bed, he knows that the old woman hasn't long for life. Her skin burns everywhere with fever, and her eyes, though opened, have rolled back into her skull so that all he can see of them is white. He sets a hand on her arm and feels her heat, and the pendulum inside of him swings back. He thinks, Please, now, before Santana wakes. He counts a beat and then several more.

And then his mother gasps.

One more inhalation, as if she had waited for Mateo to rise and witness it.

She breathes in. Her fever soars. She stills, pulseless. And she is gone.

When Mateo shuts her eyelids, the motion is mechanical. When he pulls up the bed sheets to cover the body, it is an action as rehearsed as if it were in a play. His only sensations are dizziness and exhaustion. He remembers that Santana made him coffee hours ago and decides to have some, nodding to himself, leaving the body behind, exiting the room, shutting the door after him.

Everything is still as Mateo ambles down to the kitchen, washes his hands and face once, twice, thrice in the sink and dries them one after the other on a terrycloth towel. Day has just broken over the yard outside the window. Light spreads upon the grass and trees, outlining them in gilt. Birdsongs warble against the sky, and a squirrel mounts the back fence, precocious, eager.

Mateo shuffles over to the small table, where he finds several newspapers stacked one upon another, unread since he took to administering his mother's full-time care. It surprises him when he discovers today's edition of the news already amidst the lot. He reads the date at the top of the paper—25th March 1898—and then he scans the headline.

U.S. DECLARES WAR AGAINST SPAIN.

* * *

Mateo drinks tepid coffee and wonders if he should feel changed, now that he is an orphan. He watches the light turn from brass to white outside the window and discovers stillness in the well of himself. He has not supposed that he had parents for a very long while now, not as he did when he was a child, not since he first told David and Alma that he had fallen in love with Bonnie and they had shouted at him their terrible words and harsh obscenities.

Even when Alma came to live at the bachelor cottage, she was not his mother again; she was Santana's grandmother and caretaker. Mateo could not look to her to nurture him, though sometimes he still craved her nurturing, even as a grown man.

Now Mateo rinses his cup in the sink, watches dark dregs drown down the drain. He washes his hands again, and exits the house through the backdoor. Puck is already awake and dressed in the yard, organizing his work for the day as he ought to be. Mateo finds him kneeling on the grass, sharpening garden sheers with a whetstone.

When Mateo approaches him, Puck looks up, startled to see Mateo at such an early hour, or maybe just to encounter Mateo outside the house at all. Mateo's shadow falls across him like a blanket.

Mrs. Lopez has expired, Mateo announces. And I need you to convey a message to one of my colleagues, letting him know that I will not be in to the hospital today and that he ought to make an excuse to the Chair of Surgery on my behalf. Tell him that I am not well. Will you do that for me?

Mateo reaches into his jacket pocket and procures a dollar bill, offering it to Puck between two fingers.

Sure thing, Doc, Puck says, reaching up to accept the money. Whatever you need.

He seems genuinely concerned for the death in a way that surprises Mateo—as if he understands the gravity of it and even regrets it, in some way.

Mateo nods, grateful for Puck's willingness to pass along his lies. I shall furnish you with the address, and then I must go inside to tell Miss Lucas the news about her grandmother, he says.

This time, Puck is slower to answer. Sure thing, he repeats, eyes clouding and expression turning queer.

Briefly, Mateo wonders how it is when someone dies at Puck's circus—if Puck has any better concept of death than does Santana and if Puck has ever had reason to grieve. The boy gazes up at Mateo in a way that is almost too familiar, but he says nothing either personal or vulgar, choosing most wisely to keep his peace.

Mateo provides to Puck directions to Stewart's house—of Mateo's friends, Stewart lives the closest to Gramercy Park, and he alone will not think anything of Mateo taking off from work with such little notice—and Puck sets out forthwith.

For a few more moments, Mateo lingers in the yard.

He sighs, heavy from so much effort.

* * *

Santana is still like a portrait when Mateo finds her.

He had known that she was already awake because she had brought the newspaper inside the house from the outdoors, but still it surprises him to see her dressed for the day and having let open the door to her grandmother's bedroom.

She waits in the doorframe, keeping one hand upon the door handle, and doesn't dare to cross the threshold or trespass into the dead place.

When she hears Mateo approach her, mounting the stairs at her back, she says at once, I didn't know where you had gone.

She seems to think that Mateo will scold her for having discovered Alma's death on her own, without him having told her of it himself.

She isn't breathing, is she? she asks, unable to look away from the sight.

No, she isn't, Mateo says, walking over to stand at Santana's back, setting a hand on her shoulder.

For a long while, father and daughter stand together, observing the dead woman before them, seeing the way dust motes spangle the air and catch the morning light streaming through the window.

I've never seen a dead person before, Santana says at last.

Mateo does not know how to gauge the admission—does not know if Santana reaches for his comfort or if she has only made an impassive remark in the same way that she used to when she was a child and would inquire to him concerning trivia from her books.

Without meaning to, Mateo thinks back to the first dead person he ever saw—a neighbor boy from Union Square who took a dreadful fall from a high window left open on a summer's night. Mateo's father brought Mateo to the wake because the boy was Mateo's schoolmate, in Mateo's same year.

Though the boy had been breeched long ago, his mother had determined to bury him in a dress of frilly white lace. The boy sported cosmetics about his cheeks and eyes to conceal the bruising from his fall. He clutched flowers in his hands that his sisters had picked for him in the park.

Mateo remembers thinking of how waxen the boy looked, how false and still. It was difficult for Mateo, as only a child of eight, to reconcile this prop in the coffin with the lively fellow who had played hoops with him on the schoolyard and in the streets. Mateo had not felt any real sorrow for the boy's death, for he hadn't understood enough about death to comprehend its permanence. It had all seemed very far away to him, though he stood right beside it.

Again without meaning to, Mateo thinks of his second dead person—one of the older fellows from his neighborhood who had joined the Union Army and come back to Union Square in a box following the Battle of Shiloh.

Mateo thinks of his third dead person—a cadaver at the medical school.

Then he thinks of too many to number until his father died and Bonnie advised him to attend the funeral, and too many again until Bonnie suddenly died herself.

He thinks of Bonnie, lying on the same bed where Alma lies now, thinks of her pallor and her beauty and of how she wasn't warm enough when last he kissed her skin. He thinks of dressing Bonnie to transport her to her family's house, of the clumsy rubber of her limbs, of paying the hearse drivers to come upstairs and take her by the ankles and under the arms away.

Mateo isn't sentimental about dead bodies, but he doesn't know how to talk about them, really.

He squeezes Santana's shoulder.

You'll remember, now that you have, is all that he can say.

* * *

As soon Puck returns from delivering Mateo's message of excuse to Stewart, Mateo sends him out again, this time via hack to Queens and Calvary. Mateo entrusts Puck with twenty dollars with which to purchase a casket and a plot. He makes Puck repeat Alma's full Christian name several times so that Puck can remember to tell it to the priest.

When Puck asks Mateo if Mateo would like to have the old lady buried in any particular place—under a tree or by any predeceased members of her family—Mateo shakes his head and says quickly, Just anywhere. It doesn't matter. I believe her husband died in her own country. Her son must have died, as well.

As soon as Puck goes away, Mateo returns to Alma's bedroom and begins to prepare her body for transport, cleaning it of death's detritus, changing it into an old dress, and combing out its hair.

The work is awkward and tedious. For as much as Mateo would like to pretend that his physician's training has made him entirely unbothered by nakedness and death, he must admit to himself that there is something unnatural in a son handling his naked mother, in him manipulating her joints and limbs now that she is gone.

Had Mateo not accustomed himself to dressing Santana when Santana was still very small, he would not know how to go about fitting Alma into this last outfit today. As it is, it takes him ten minutes to maneuver underskirts past Alma's dead knees and at least three attempts to put her limp left arm through a shirtsleeve.

Once Mateo has finally dressed the corpse, he moves it into the old chair in the corner and sets about denuding the bed, changing out the linens and blankets, which reek of death. He finds stains upon the mattress—water, blood, and other fluids. He also discovers steely strands of Alma's hair clinging to her pillowcase.

When Mateo has cleared the space and fitted it with fresh coverings, he repositions Alma's corpse on the bed, fidgeting with the position. At first, Mateo lies Alma's arms at her sides, but when that pose seems unwieldy, so he fixes it by crossing Alma's hands over her navel, arranging her in such a way that she appears at rest.

Somehow, Alma looks better now in death than she did for the last several weeks of her life. There is no torsion of pain straining her face. Her features have softened. Whatever had been bilious in her has sunk below the surface so that even her complexion and colors have improved.

After Mateo arranges the body as it pleases him, he goes to the washroom and bathes himself and then changes into a fresh suit. For the first time in days, he allows himself a proper shave and cologne upon his neck. Looking into the mirror, he wonders if he feels sad. If he does, he sees no traces of it in himself—not for Alma, anyway.

He has not seen Santana since the morning and so goes searching for her downstairs.

She sits upon the sofa couch, one leg propped up upon the coffee table before her, her elbow rested on her knee, her hand covering her mouth. Her skirt hangs down low between her legs in a sling, and her shoulders curl just slightly forward. Though her posture is unladylike, it is also somehow artful. She reminds Mateo of a figurine made from porcelain, of something beautiful and delicate. Momentarily, she is still, but Mateo knows that she could crack and crush at even the slightest disturbance.

Sure enough, when she sees Mateo, she shudders, curls farther into herself, hugging her arms around her middle. Her eyes shine wet under the light.

Papa, she says, and he rushes to her, maneuvering around the coffee table to sit down on the sofa couch at her side.

Over the past several months—years, even—Mateo has often seen Santana sad and weeping, but the sight of it still never ceases to pick apart his heart seams and leave them all undone and broken.

Today, Santana bears anguish in her, a confluence of sorrow and confusion and hurt so present that Mateo can see it in her eyes. He knows it well enough himself, remembers how it feels, the broken glass in it. He wraps his arms around Santana's shoulders and pulls her close to him so that her head rests under his chin and her ear presses to his neck, so that she can hear his heartbeat in his throat. Santana's shoulders wrack, but her ribs remain tight. She gasps, but no air enters her lungs.

She—, she gapes. She—

Shh, Mateo soothes, clutching Santana against the sobs that tremor through her body. Breathe, peach. Just try to breathe.

* * *

Mateo supposes that he ought to have ordered mourning clothes for Santana as soon as he realized that Alma would die, for now his lack of foresight necessitates that Santana wear Alma's old mourning clothes to Alma's own funeral.

The mistake is almost vulgar.

Santana strikes a surreal figure, the perfect image of her grandmother, even down to the high collars and laced sleeves. She looks like the juxtaposition of Alma's bridal portrait and Mateo's memory of Alma at David's funeral. She won't stop fidgeting at the brooch at her neck, picking at it, wriggling. Mateo hardly blames her.

They start their coach ride to Queens in utter silence. Santana didn't want to attend the funeral. She wept and said that Alma wouldn't have wanted her there, that Alma died despising and blaming her. Mateo told her that it doesn't matter what Alma wanted anymore.

Santana has never ventured as faraway from the bachelor cottage as this.

Normally, Mateo would expect to see Santana fascinated, pressing her face against the coach window so that she could take in every avenue, park, and building en route to the cemetery. But today, Santana remains totally still, like an illustration in one of her books, her head rested against the inside panel of the coach wall, her gaze watery and fixed on nothing either near or present. She remains rapt in silence even as the coach trundles over the East River via the Brooklyn Bridge.

You hadn't yet had your fourth birthday when they opened this route, Mateo says, drawing Santana from her reverie.

She stares at him with wide, dark eyes but doesn't speak. Whereas on the day when Alma died, she wanted Mateo's company most desperately, now she seems almost unready for it, like it startles or upsets her in some way.

Mateo tries to coax a smile to her mouth.

When it first opened, people worried that the bridge wouldn't hold, he explains, so the famous circus proprietor Mr. P.T. Barnum paraded twenty of his elephants over the causeway in file, showing that the bridge could support their combined weights.

When Santana doesn't react, Mateo makes another attempt.

He smiles, tentative.

I wanted to take you to see the spectacle, but your grandmother wouldn't allow it. You were so small then. I would have had to carry you on my shoulders for you to see anything anyhow, I suppose.

Mateo waits for Santana to say something, but she doesn't. She only casts her eyes down to the floor of the coach and swallows, hard. Mateo feels something inside of himself plummet, as if he had missed a step while descending a staircase. He falters.

You're still so small. My little lady, he observes. Then, Has Puck mentioned the elephants at his circus to you? He says they're very droll and positively enormous.

At first, Santana shrugs in reply. Mr. Puckerman and I don't... We aren't... conversant, she mutters.

She shrugs again and returns her gaze to the floor, watching the way the coach bed rattles slightly underfoot, jostled by the uneven terrain, the wooden slats of the boardwalk. Her fingers traipse over the brooch at her neck.

Prisms catch the glass window, settling spangles of white upon the walls and benches in the coach cabin. Snatches of diamond light spread out like an ocean between Mateo and Santana, and suddenly Mateo feels as if his little girl is very distant from him—like he does not know her, as she wishes for him not to know. She is strange to him, closed off like a secret room. He wants desperately to reach to her, but he can't think of what precisely he might say.

Minutes pass, and finally Santana squeaks, May I please stay in the coach? Papa, when we get there, may I stay inside here, please?

Mateo sighs. You'll hate yourself if you don't say goodbye, he tells her gently. You really ought to come along with me.

* * *

The plot which Puck purchased for Alma's burial lies upon the incline of a sharp hill. Mateo and Santana are the only mourners to attend the rites. The priest chants prayers and reads Latin verses from the Bible, and, as he does so, tears dribble down Santana's chin and disappear into the dark fabric of her dress like raindrops into rich furrows of soil. She shuts her eyes most tightly and knots her hands together, repeating Amen, Amen, Amen in fervent whisper, as if she finally believes.

There is something uncanny about seeing Santana in widow's black, standing over the grave of an old woman. It is not the black gown he had imagined for his daughter over these last few months. Mateo wants to reach out to Santana, to touch her arm or draw her into some embrace, but he durst not make any contact. He does not fear the aged priest and neither any other passerby who might visit the cemetery grounds. What he fears is that Santana might somehow reject him and that he could not bear it if she did so.

So he waits in her shadow.

He is failing her again, he knows.

Do you want to say anything? Mateo asks her quietly once the priest has finished the requiem and begun to vacate the plot.

Santana shakes her head. She hated me, she mumbles.

Mateo wishes that he could dispute the claim with any sort of authority behind his words, but he knows that he cannot. Even if he tried to do so, Santana would never believe him. Anger surges in his breast, not at Santana but at his own helplessness and at his mother for depriving him of the one thing he had always been able to do unfailingly well for his daughter—to care for her when she was hurt.

Without cause, he says, iron in his voice. And riddance to her, then. We are alive, you and I, Santana. Let us leave her here and take you home.

* * *

An injured body will take provision to heal itself to the extent that it possesses the ability to do so. Blood will clot around wounds, and wounds will scab over. New skin will form, become strong and fresh. The browns, yellows, and violets of bruises will fade away into nothing. Broken bones will set, ossify. Muscles will relearn their former patterns of motion. These processes require energy to take affect—energy and time.

Mateo expects that it will be the same with Santana: that time will pass, and she will put her energy toward new enterprises. He expects that Santana will heal, relearning her former motions, becoming the girl he recognizes once more.

Not all injuries are equal, though.

And sometimes an injured body does not heal—it simply learns new motions to work around old wounds.

* * *

Mateo must return to the hospital immediately following the funeral. In one wise, he frets to leave Santana in her time of vulnerability, but, in another, he feels relieved to have some distance from her, for he suspects, somehow, that Santana prefers such an arrangement—that she does not desire her papa's company today.

As Mateo vacates the property, he stops in the yard to confer with Puck.

If she requires anything, come fetch me from the hospital, as you did before, he instructs. If she requires anything—anything at all.

A pause.

Also, if you could, try to check on her. Make some excuse to knock on the door. Ask her if she knows the time or where this or that tool is kept. Don't mention her grandmother. Just—

I got it, Doc.

Mateo travels in a daze to the hospital. He blears through an anatomy lesson with his medical students and fails to properly greet the Chair of Surgery when passing the man in the hall. After performing a very routine amputation of a toe, Mateo lingers outside the surgical suite, leaned against a wall and breathing hard. He finds himself dreading to return to the bachelor cottage. He has nothing to say there.

Santana doesn't want him.

Mateo closes his eyes, resting his head against the brick at his back, curling his fingers around the rail. If Santana were young, he could come home to her with sweets and sarsaparilla, and she would forgive all, but now she is grown, and Mateo doesn't know for what wrongs he even requires her forgiveness.

There are too many, he supposes.

Despite his reservations and despite what Santana might wish, Mateo returns to the bachelor cottage bearing a bag of peppermint humbugs and a bottle of sarsaparilla. Santana has supper waiting for him but claims that she isn't hungry herself. She tells Mateo almost curtly, You might have a word with Mr. Puckerman. He kept trying to shirk his chores by coming around the house to chat.

She tucks the sarsaparilla bottle away into the icebox, untouched.

Mateo doesn't see to where the peppermint humbugs disappear.

After Mateo finishes his meal, Santana takes a long while to clear the table of the very few dishes. She pauses, hovering over each plate and tureen before she takes it up in turn. For a long while, she stands at the sink, staring out into the yard.

I'll wash my own plate and the rest, Mateo tells her.

Thank you, Papa, she says, retreating into the parlor.

Mateo takes his time at the task, scrubbing and rescrubbing each dish until the porcelain shines, reflecting the electric lights of the kitchen. He needlessly tidies the room, straightening dishtowels in the drawer and rearranging the contents of the icebox until his hands ache from cold. It is almost silent; the only sounds are those of the house settling into its foundations for the night.

After finishing his chores, Mateo enters the parlor on pretense of searching for his pipe. He expects to find Santana sitting in the bay window or on the sofa couch, but instead he hears her rustling at something in the foyer. Turning the corner, Mateo discovers Santana crouched beneath the coat-rack hanging on the wall. She has her hands upon his surgeon's bag, which rests beside his Brogan shoes upon the floor. When Santana perceives Mateo's presence, she looks up, stricken, unhanding the bag as if it had burnt her.

May I help you with something, sweet? Mateo asks her, trying to be gentle.

Santana blinks back her panic, once, twice, one-hundred times. She swallows. No, no, she says. I just—I thought—

She turns, slumping down against the wall, breathing heavy breaths. Mateo doesn't know what she was looking for in his bag, but he does know that she fears his reprimand more than anything. He has no intention to reprimand her, though.

Let her trespass where she will.

She grimaces, closing her eyes and pinching her thumb and forefinger at the bridge of her nose.

I'm so tired, Papa, she confesses. I can't sleep. I'm so tired.

Mateo nods. He understands perhaps better than Santana might suppose how it is to live with the knowledge that someone has gone to the grave resenting you and your existence—how that knowledge makes for restlessness and long, unending nights. He sighs, extricating his hands from his pockets, and leans against the wall, sliding down it until he too sits crouched upon the floor like Santana. His surgeon's bag and shoes occupy the space between them.

Some minutes pass, and finally Mateo says, She was probably sick for a long while. We just didn't know about it until now. She was sick before you read her cards, maybe sick for years. There was nothing anyone could do, precious—not you nor I nor anyone.

Santana doesn't reply. She only nods in the same sapient way that she used to when she was a child and Mateo would answer her inquiries regarding her school lessons to her satisfaction. Mateo doesn't know if her silence means that she has accepted his excuse or if she merely humors him.

More minutes pass, and Mateo's thighs begin to burn from sitting in a crouch.

When we have insomniacs at the hospital, I tell them to take warm baths, he says. I'll go upstairs and run the water for you, peach.

* * *

The next day at the hospital, Mateo approaches Fowler, who has a daughter not so many years older than Santana. He puts forth to him some story.

I—I have a patient who has come to my private office—or the father of a patient, I must say. He is concerned for his daughter, a young lady not yet nineteen years in age who recently lost her grandmother to illness. He says that now his daughter has become, I suppose he would say, strange—

Meaning that she is morose?

No, meaning that she is queer. Unlike herself, I suppose. Affectionate one moment and utterly unsociable the next. He—the father—is concerned for her wellbeing. Do you suppose there is anything medically the matter with the girl?

Fowler considers for a moment, stroking his beard and pondering.

Without seeing her? It's difficult to know, he shrugs. Girls of that certain age are all very queer anyway. They're highly temperate creatures, and it's impossible to know what they're thinking.

That's what I suspected, Mateo says, somewhat relieved.

Fowler nods, still mulling. Do you know for how long this strangeness has lasted? Was it affected only at the passing of the grandmother, or did it begin before the grandmother's death?

The question affronts Mateo.

I—, he stammers. Well, I don't know. I—I didn't think to ask the father. I don't suppose he would know.

It could be a hysterical condition, Fowler offers, shrugging.

Mateo remembers a time when his mother suggested to him much the same thing.

* * *

Santana stops reading.

Mateo leaves books from the Grolier Club for her at her usual reading place by the bay window, but the books go untouched for days. Sometimes she will sit beside them, but she does not take them into her lap or even pretend to skim the pages. She is someplace else—someone else—perhaps more than she has ever been before.

One night over supper, Mateo confronts Santana concerning her sudden change in habits.

Do you not like any of the books I brought you? he asks. I could replace them for you, if you like.

Santana shrugs. You needn't replace them, she says.

Well, you do you intend to read them? Mateo pursues.

Perhaps someday, she shrugs.

You don't seem to read anymore, Mateo observes.

Santana shrugs again but makes no objection.

After supper, she does not take up her usual place in the parlor but instead retreats upstairs to her bedroom, closing the door behind her. Mateo waits for her to come back downstairs, but she does not, even when the clock strikes ten.

When he leaves the house, he takes four unread novels with him.

* * *

The answer comes to Mateo while he is at his apartment, readying for sleep. He is considering to himself how, ever since his mother's death and the onset of this change in Santana, his food has lost its savor and his own thoughts have become poisonous to him, deplorable—that he cannot abide himself because he has failed as a son, husband, father, and man. He admits to himself how guilty he feels that he has harmed Santana by his silence.

And that's when he realizes.

It is Santana's guilt that has changed her.

Santana still supposes somehow that she wrought Alma's death by those damnable cards. She still blames herself for driving Alma into a grave, even though Mateo has assured her that Alma was ill even prior to the reading. Santana has always been so quick to find fault in herself where there is none. Mateo should have ascertained it before.

Santana will not be herself until she has assuaged her conscience.

If Mateo could reason Santana away from her guilt, he would do so. However, he knows that, though Santana trusts him perhaps more than she ought to, her conscience is louder than her reason, and her heart will not believe his explanations, though her head might be disposed to so do.

If Mateo wants to prove to Santana that she is not responsible in any way for Alma's death, then he will have to devise some other means by which to make his point.

He devises a certain scientific mechanism—an experiment that will prove to Santana that the cards are a superstition, of no real power or consequence, beyond all suspicion of doubt.

He calls to Santana after supper.

Sweeting, come into the parlor! I would like to show you something.

He waits to hear her footfalls, obedient upon the floorboards. He waits until he sees her appear at the threshold of the door, backlit by the electric lamps. He watches her eyes sweep over him, moving from where he sits upon the sofa couch to the arrangement he has made before himself: to the dining room chair set in front of the coffee table, to the cards stacked neatly upon the tabletop. He watches fear ignite in her countenance like flame.

She swallows, hard. Papa? she says, wary.

Mateo smiles at her, reassuring. Santana, my love, he says, I wondered if you might do for me a very simple thing? I would like you, if you are willing, to read my tarot spread and tell me what my future will be.

I'm sorry, Papa. I cannot, Santana says.

It is the first time that Santana has ever refused Mateo anything that he had asked her to do in earnest. However, her refusal is not something that Mateo had failed to expect. He smiles again.

You cannot or you will not? he asks.

Santana hesitates but only for a second.

I will not, she says truthfully. I durst not.

You durst not, Mateo repeats, chewing her words—which, again, are not entirely unexpected. Mateo rests his chin upon his folded hands, his elbows upon his legs. You durst not read my cards because you are afraid? he clarifies.

Yes, Papa, Santana says. I am afraid because—because I have a curse. I do not want to do anything that might cause you harm.

She knots her hands together, retreating slightly into the shadow cast from the doorframe. She is ashamed of herself, and Mateo's heart seams loosen for her.

Come sit, he says, and Santana does as he bids, taking a seat in the chair before the coffee table.

She moves with great circumspection, a skittish bird uncertain if it ought to perch on a particular branch. Mateo means to put her at ease.

Did you know, he says, very conversationally, that no physician or scientist has ever been able to verify the existence of a curse? He pauses, wets his lips. Have you ever heard of the Shawnee chief called Tecumseh?

Santana nods. I've read about him for my history lessons. It was he who fought President Harrison at the Battle of Tippecanoe.

Mateo smirks, pleased by Santana's recall, though he corrects her concerning one detail: Chief Tecumseh fought Governor Harrison at the Battle of Tippecanoe, for Harrison had not yet won election to the presidency and would not do so until nearly thirty years later. Do you know why Harrison's election is significant in regards to Chief Tecumseh and the Battle of Tippecanoe, summer peach?

Santana shakes her head, baffled. This conversation has clearly surpassed her expectations. She waits for Mateo to explain his reasoning to her, as if he were again her school tutor and she his student at her slate.

His election is significant, Mateo explains, because some say that Tecumseh set a curse upon it—and a curse upon every election which occurs in a year which ends in zero subsequent to it. The curse is that whosoever is elected president in a year ending in zero shall die whilst in office. When Harrison won election in 1840, he contracted a chest cold and served only one month as president before he expired. An assassin murdered Abraham Lincoln, elected in 1860, when I was eight years in age. A Mr. Guiteau assassinated James Garfield, elected in 1880, in 1881.

Santana's brow furrows. What about the president of 1850? Was there an election that year?

There was not, Mateo says. But Zachary Taylor, elected in 1849, died suddenly in office in 1850. Taylor's vice president, Millard Fillmore, became president without any election in 1850 upon Taylor's death. Fillmore died in 1874, long after leaving office.

And what of the president of 1870? Santana asks.

There was no election that year, Mateo says.

He watches Santana think through this new information, weighing it out in her mind and determining how she believes. She frowns and looks to Mateo, confused, and he can easily discern her thoughts.

Based on everything Mateo has just told her, it seems to Santana that Tecumseh's curse is a real one. But Mateo just told Santana that there is no medical or scientific proof that would verify the existence of a curse.

What, then, does Mateo mean by presenting Santana with this contradictory information? Doesn't Mateo intend to convince Santana not to fear curses? Why should he make such a good case for the veracity of Tecumseh's curse of he does not believe in it or any curse himself?

Papa? Santana says, flummoxed.

A person who fears curses may understand these happenings as evidence of a curse, Mateo says, keeping his conversational tone, but let us examine all of this from another perspective, shall we? It is true that Presidents Harrison, Lincoln, and Garfield all won elections in years ending in zeros and all died whilst in office. But what of President Taylor? He was elected in a year ending in nine, and he died whilst in office anyhow. If the curse was only set on years which ended in zero, was he a victim of the curse?

I suppose not, Santana says.

Mateo nods. Peach, I agree, he says. We must attribute his death to tragic happenstance. And what of President Fillmore, who was unelected, though he assumed office in a year ending in zero? Did the curse apply to him?

No, Santana says. And he didn't die while in office anyhow. He died afterwards.

Mateo nods again, Correct. So then you and I are in agreement that certain happenings which at first may appear to have occurred due to a curse may in fact turn out to be nothing more than simple coincidence?

Santana mulls the hypothesis. I suppose, she says.

Very well, says Mateo. Then let us consider President Lincoln's death.

Santana frowns, affronted. But you have already said that he won election in a year ending in zero and that he died in office, she objects.

I did say that, Mateo admits. But I have not spoken forthrightly, or at least not with all detail. President Lincoln won election to his first term in 1860, but, as you will recall, he won election again in the midst of the great Civil War. He died during his second term. How must we account for that happening?

How do you mean, Papa?

I mean, how must we account for the fact that President Lincoln did not die during his first term, which was, after all, the one which began in a year ending in zero? He died during his second term, which began in 1864. Did the curse predict that he would win a second election and wait to have him until his second time in office? Oughtn't he to have died during his first term?

Santana frowns even more deeply than before. I—I don't know, she stammers.

Peach, Mateo says gently, it is not so uncommon a thing to see causation when there is only coincidence. Does it not seem likely that a president as divisive as Lincoln would suffer assassination? That a frail president like Harrison should die of a chest cold after spending all day out in the rain making a speech at his inauguration? Why attribute these happenings to a curse when we can clearly see that the evidence of the curse is tenuous at best and that there are other perfectly logical, perfectly explainable reasons that would account for these happenings otherwise?

Mateo reaches across the table and takes up Santana's hands, enveloped between his own. Her skin is cold to the touch, and she trembles. She has not eaten or slept well, as of late. She is not well. Mateo would do anything to cure her.

Tears well in Santana's eyes, and she doesn't make a reply.

Cards are only cards, precious, Mateo says, holding her gaze. They are just thick paper and ink, and they haven't any power over you or me or anyone. Mr. Bradley suffered a terrible accident, but it happened on account of a streetcar schedule and clumsiness, not on account of a curse. Your grandmother was an old, frail woman in ill-health. She was already dying when you read her cards. The curse could not have affected her illness when she was ill before the curse could have possibly fallen upon her. Don't you see, my love? Sometimes events happen which may seem related, as by a curse, but they are nothing more than coincidence—a terrible coincidence but coincidence nonetheless.

By now, Santana cries with great, wet tears raining down her cheeks, catching in her dark, pretty eyelashes in the way they did when she was only a toddler. She gasps and presses a hand to her mouth, trying to stifle her upset but no avail. She rocks back and forth upon her chair.

But it is not that cards that a-are cursed, she sobs. Don't you see, Papa? It is me who is cursed. Mr. Bradley and Abuela d-died because they knew me.

I know you, Mateo says, rubbing over Santana's hands between his own, and I am not dead.

B-but you will be if I read for you, Santana chokes.

I will not be, Mateo says. I am a young man and in excellent health. I am not the president, so it is most unlikely that anyone would attempt to assassinate me. I do not make it my habit to walk in front of streetcars. I eat a healthy diet and maintain my hygiene. I participate in no dangerous activities. I shall not die until I am very old. I do not believe in that which science cannot prove. I do not believe in curses.

Santana shakes her head. Please, Papa, don't make me read for you! I couldn't stand it if I drew you Death and then you were to die, she begs.

It is not Mateo's intention to upset or frighten Santana, but he must make her see. She cannot go on living with this guilt in her heart. She cannot function under belief in this curse. Mateo must help Santana to overcome it. He peers at her, waiting until she meets his gaze. He waits for her to focus on him, to find that which she has always been able to trust in him. He is still, and she stills.

Please, she mouths.

Santana, he says, both firm and gentle, calm though she is not. I have never done anything that I knew could harm you. I would never ask you to do something that is wicked or harmful or dangerous at all. I have only ever wanted what is best for you, from the moment that you were born. Cards are only cards, my love. Won't you read for me?

His entreaty flags between them like a standard staked to new land in the name of a king.

It is bold, invasive.

It stabs through to Santana's two most basic and competing impulses: her trust in her father and her fear of doing wrong.

Santana knows that Mateo has spoken truly—that he has never knowingly done anything to cause her harm and that he has always cared for her and counseled her well. She trusts him, as she always has, to provide for her and direct her. Ever since she was just a wee wisp of a thing, she could crawl into his lap and implore him for kisses, grabbing onto his lapels and nestling her face against his chest.

But now Mateo has asked Santana to do something that she supposes will hurt him.

He has asked her for that which she durst not give to him or anyone.

For an instant, Santana is stricken, like Alma's Christ upon the Cross, her eyes darker and more fearful than Mateo has ever seen them be before. Her hands tense in Mateo's hands, and another sob wracks her body, though this time silently. She trembles and looks away to the floor.

Do you p-promise? she asks. Do you promise you won't die?

I promise, my love. Claro.

* * *

When Mateo first invented his plan, he considered, for a moment, removing the Death card from the tarot deck in order to prevent Santana from drawing it. However, he soon determined that he did not mean to shield Santana from what frightened her. Rather, he intended to teach Santana to cast aside her fears and—consequently—her guilt. Santana cannot learn not to fear the Death card if Mateo treats the Death card as if it is something worthy of her fear. Santana cannot learn to give up her guilt if Mateo acts as if she has some reason to feel guilty.

And so the card remains in the deck.

If Santana doesn't draw it, then she will see that it is not her curse to always lay it in her spreads. If she does draw it, then she will see that it holds no power, for Mateo will not die, unlike Bradley and Alma before him. Though Santana often allows her fears to rule her, she is, on the whole, a sensible girl. She will see reason, and then she will no longer make herself sick with blame. She will have reason to smile again. She will be well, and both her heart and Mateo's heart will finally be at ease.

* * *

Alma often read tarot when Mateo was young—to see what would come of David's business decisions, to determine to what schools she ought to send Mateo and what courses Mateo ought to take to distinguish himself in his life, to get herself advice on little matters of the day.

When he was very young, Mateo would watch Alma unfold her deck, loving its vivid colors and funny characters splayed out upon the dining room table, but now that he is a grown man and has renounced religion, he has not looked upon the cards so often.

They are strange to him, especially in his daughter's hands.

In the moments leading to the reading, Santana quails and chokes back tears, a child frightened of a nightmare, but as she begins to lay the cards, gradually, she transforms. Santana instructs Mateo to shuffle the cards and cut the deck into three portions, which he does, and suddenly she is firm, even—possessed of a different humor than before, dark like wine, even as a tranquil night sea. She draws a first card and tells Mateo that it represents him.

It is the King of Swords.

Mateo does not remember what his mother used to say that the King of Swords signified, and he does not especially care. Santana does not interpret the card for him. She says only that she will now begin the reading in earnest. She begins to lay down cards from the stacks—one, two, three; one, two, three; over and over again in repetitions. She remains silent throughout the reading, either unwilling to speak or unable to do so.

In truth, Mateo pays far less attention to the reading than he does to Santana and to the way she moves so gracefully, setting this card here and that card there, her lips pursed tight, her brow taut in concentration. How queer that in a moment when Santana should strongly resemble Alma, Santana is actually a mirror of Bonnie, as involved and singular in tarot as Bonnie always was with needlework.

As Mateo has so often supposed over these last few weeks, Santana is not a little girl anymore.

She lays the Hanged Man.

She is grown.

The Wheel of Fortune.

She is beautiful.

Judgment.

The World.

This perfect, private person, whom it is Mateo's greatest pleasure to know.

Santana lays draws another card from a deck, sees it, and hesitates. Her calm does not rupture all at once. A pause precedes it, as does a tremor, and then something alters behind her eyes, until all at once they are no longer like the glassy night sea and are rather a brewing storm.

Mateo follows Santana's gaze to the curve of her wrist, to the clutch of her hand, to where she holds a card wavering just an inch above the tabletop. The card's face transfixes her, and she holds her breath, and Mateo can hear her silence.

The card is Death.

And in spite of himself, Mateo feels, for an instant, fear.

* * *

Though Mateo expects Santana to make some exclamation, she does not. After her initial tremor, an intense stillness emanates from her, preternatural, too much, too deep, like the subterranean chambers of an ancient cave. She says nothing—only sets the card beside the others in its place. It is the penultimate draw for the spread, so she draws one other after it.

The Ten of Swords.

Mateo does not know the meaning of the Ten of Swords, but Santana seems not to like it much. Her eyes fill with tears, and her jaw quakes. At once, she rises from her place, pushing her chair out behind her. She wipes her face furiously with the lace cuff of her sleeve. Though she opens her mouth as if to speak, no sound passes her lips. She closes her mouth, closes her eyes, shakes her head, takes leave.

Santana! Mateo calls, but she has already crossed the parlor and begun bounding up the stairs.

Mateo rises from the sofa couch. By now, his wits have returned to him. He no longer fears the Death card, but he does fear that he has made a poor decision, allowing Santana to draw it. She has always hated to do anything which seems wrong in the least. Even though nothing unfortunate will happen to Mateo on account of the reading, Santana will still hate that she drew him the Death card. She will think that she has somehow disappointed him or shown him disrespect.

Her footfalls knell through the ceiling as she surmounts the staircase and rushes into her bedroom. The door closes loudly behind her.

Mateo sighs and runs a hand over his face.

How does any father know the right choices to make concerning his children?

He paces away from the coffee table and across the length of the room, rubbing his face again and again. Fury builds in him like the whisper of a crowd increasing into a roar. The feeling nearly deafens him from the insides, until he can hear nothing else but his own angry heartbeat. He grits his teeth. With a shout, he throws himself against the parlor hearth, slapping the butt of his open palm hard against the prickly brick. His muscles tense and uncoil like a striking viper, and then suddenly he is spent. He leans his brow against the hearth and breathes heavy breaths.

Why is it that he can never seem to predict in advance which of his actions will harm Santana the most?

* * *

Santana allows Mateo to rehearse to her again and again his assurances that the Death card holds no power and that she has done no wrong. She listens to Mateo most politely, nodding when he asks if she understands his meaning and saying Yes, Papa when he tells her that she oughtn't to blame herself for anything. But she will not meet Mateo's gaze. Her eyes shine wet against the electric lights, and she stares at the cracks between the floorboards.

Mateo feels, somehow, as if Santana stands a far way off from him, like she is upon the land and he out at sea in some vessel. Though he shouts to her and gesticulates most wildly, she cannot hear him over the crash of the waves. He drifts ever farther out upon the whitecaps. She remains isolated, lonely along the shore.

Santana is waiting for some ill to befall Mateo, not because she wants it to but because she fears that it must. She is holding her breath indefinitely. She will not speak to Mateo concerning her anxieties, but they are plain to him all the same.

The old recalcitrance builds in Mateo, and he hates his mother more than ever before because it seems to him that her word somehow trumps his own. While a very living Mateo continues to exhort to Santana that there is no curse upon her, a very dead Alma argues otherwise in Santana's memories, and somehow Alma's voice seems to resonate with Santana longer. Santana heeds Alma more.

Mateo tries to exercise patience. Weeks will pass, then months, then years, and Santana will see Mateo overcome her so-called curse. Mateo will live to have Santana married to someone, to see her bear him grandchildren, to be happy, to live well. Eventually, Santana will stop fretting for her papa. Until then, Mateo must strive to do all in his power to prove his continued well-being to her.

But no matter how Mateo attempts to temper himself, he still finds it difficult to sleep. When he does drift away, Bonnie comes to him in dreams, always scowling and unnerved. She will not speak to him. She is displeased, and Mateo knows why.

Everything seems to blur around Mateo, from his days at work to his nights at the bachelor cottage. Though his routine remains largely the same as it has been for years, his activities suddenly seem to happen too quickly and all at once.

At the hospital, Mateo works almost automatically, correcting this student's technique at sutures and repairing that defect at the surgical table. He is perfunctory, efficient, and frequently unsociable. He can't stop thinking about Santana's face when she drew the Death card, even as he moves from one task to another, completing his rounds and attending his meetings.

One day, Stewart approaches him in the halls, calling out in salutation, Halloo, old dog! Have you heard? We should have several dozen army recruits coming through the medical wards for physical examinations, what on account of the war and all. Why don't we round up the interns to have them practice their evaluations? We only want to send the very best troops to face those Spanish dastards, after—!

He sets his hands on Mateo's shoulders from behind, starting to give Mateo a jovial shake.

But Mateo won't have it.

Something in him trips.

Unhand me! he shouts, colliding with Stewart in a mighty shove, running Stewart up almost against the wall opposite them. He seizes onto the lapels of Stewart's suit coat, giving Stewart a shake of his own. Heartbeats thunder through him, almost to the point of bursting. He hates and rages. Hang your war!

Stewart puts his hands up, surrendering, almost tripping backwards as he wrenches himself free from Mateo's hold.

Matty! Matty! he yelps, deferent. Hey! I'm sorry, old man!

All other traffic in the hall stops, nurses, orderlies, patients, and doctors halting in their tracks. Stewart stares at Mateo, fearful of him in a way that he has never been before. Mateo's pulse still hammers, loudly, but his hate and rage evanesce at once, replaced by a lowly shame. He breathes heavily and steps back.

I am sorry, he pants. I am—not well.

Stewart nods as if he understands, though he doesn't. He breathes just as heavily as Mateo does.

Forgive me, Mateo says, both to Stewart and the startled crowd. I must take my leave today. I shan't—I shan't see anymore patients. I must go home.

He straightens his jacket, adjusts his posture, un-animals himself, becoming a gentleman once more. A gentleman is the only thing he has ever known how to be. He nods to Stewart, to the crowd, and no one makes moves to apprehend him or to stop him from his course. He leaves to the cadence of his own heartbeat—quickly, in a march.

On the hack ride to the bachelor cottage, Mateo wonders when he will ever see Spain.

* * *

It surprises Mateo when he arrives at the bachelor cottage and hears two voices echoing in the kitchen, one low and masculine, the other higher and infinitely familiar. He enters the room to find Puck seated at the small table, a sweaty glass of ice water clutched in one hand, and Santana standing leaned against the icebox, her arms folded over her chest.

Puck is laughing, loud and golden, at some joke which Mateo has clearly just missed. Santana is chuckling more quietly, with less affectation. She wears a very queer expression, biting her bottom lip in her teeth, looking somewhere between the floor and Puck. Both she and Puck silence themselves the instant Mateo appears at the threshold of the door.

For as much as Mateo's presence seems to affront them, their combined presence affronts him perhaps even more. When was it that Santana began inviting Puck inside the house? Mateo had always thought that Santana disliked the boy. He frowns, puzzled.

Hey, Doc! Puck hails, though his greeting sounds more sheepish than cheerful.

Santana gasps. Oh! Puck was just about to step out.

Her manner is queer and somehow false. She has never referred to Puck by his nickname until today. Mateo wonders if she didn't just lie to him. He wonders again if she has ever lied to him before.

When Mateo considers whether it unnerves him to find his young daughter spending unsupervised time with a young man—and especially a young man like Puck—he finds that he isn't certain whether it does so or not.

On the one wise, Mateo tends to trust Santana very much. On the other wise, there is decorum and, moreover, decorum for a reason.

There is also the matter of Puck himself. While Puck has comported himself most excellently in Mateo's service, the man who owned the boarding house distrusted Puck immensely and probably not unduly. Mateo knows to keep a watch on Puck, but does Santana, who is guileless?

Puck looks at Santana in a certain way, and Mateo does not want to say that the way is familiar to him, but it is. It is not how Mateo used to look at Bonnie. It is how Mateo looked at other girls before Bonnie. It is how Stewart has always looked at girls.

It curdles something in the pit of Mateo's stomach.

Mateo tries not to think ill of Puck. Mateo tries to believe that Puck will honor his word to behave delicately and to do nothing to offend the little lady in the house. Maybe Puck is only being friendly. Mateo has sometimes misjudged Puck, in the past, after all.

Competing impulses—those of a humanitarian gentleman who wants to believe the best of mankind and those of the father of a young daughter who cannot afford to be wrong—battle beneath Mateo's breastbone.

Ultimately, Mateo decides that the thing he does mind is that it somehow seems that Puck has succeeded with Santana where he himself has failed: namely, in causing Santana to smile, however briefly that she does so. Though Mateo knows he ought to feel glad for any lighthearted moments Santana can enjoy these days, and does feel glad of it for the most part, his heart seams also twang as if plucked, the note somewhere between jealousy and hurt.

Puck quickly passes his glass to Santana and gathers up his hat from the small table, setting it upon his head and bowing to Mateo, all at once.

Doc, he says. He turns to Santana, Miss.

In the next instant, he's out the side door, back to the garden. The door thumps against its frame behind him, roughed by the wind.

Would you like some ice water? Santana asks Mateo.

No thank you, he says, disoriented in his own home.

* * *

Santana hides from Mateo for the rest of the night, excusing herself early from supper to sit down in the parlor and pretending to busy herself with handiwork when Mateo joins her there to read his evening newspaper.

Though Santana does not admit to it, Mateo knows that she feels guilty for inviting Puck inside the house, perhaps not so much for the potential impropriety of doing so as for the fact that her actions have now made plain a simple truth: that there is something Mateo cannot offer her that she must seek from someone other than him.

Mateo tries to remind himself how he craved friendships at her age—how Fowler and Stewart were his anchors at Columbia—but then it is too difficult for him to think on such matters, considering the happenings of the day.

Mateo does not want to begrudge Santana companionship, but he also cannot help but wonder what some rapscallion boy from a circus could possibly offer Santana that he himself cannot give to her both better and more readily.

Near the end of his night at the bachelor cottage, Mateo decides that he will have a word with Puck concerning what is appropriate behavior in regards to keeping a young lady's company. If Mateo senses any bad intentions in Puck, he will ask Puck not to accept any more invitations inside the bachelor cottage and furbish Puck with suitable excuses to make to Santana along with the declinations.

As much as he despises to admit it to himself, Mateo does not want Santana to become fond of Puck, for Mateo has much better aspirations for her than that. While Santana and Puck could perhaps become conversant with each other, they must not become altogether friendly or—worse yet—infatuated.

A part of Mateo thinks about the keeper of the boarding house on Hester Street and about the man's young daughters, and a part of him thinks about himself with Bonnie, but most of him thinks about Santana and how he would hate for her to confide in someone who will not be gentle with her—and particularly at a time when she is delicate. Mateo doesn't know that such a boy as Noah Puckerman has the capacity to be gentle with anything. He does not want to learn that he was wrong to trust Puck from the beginning.

For the first time in months, Mateo wonders about his wolf and thinks to himself of the old rhyme: Sleep, my little one, sleep. Thy father guards the sheep.

* * *

Following his scuffle with Stewart, Mateo makes himself scarce at work. He avoids the doctors' dining area and crowds, withdrawing not only from Stewart but also from Fowler and Wright, as well. He uses his professorship to his advantage, surrounding himself with medical students and interns and offering them his full attention for the day.

At one point, he thinks he hears Wright trying to greet him from down a hallway, but he turns away from the sound, unready to account for his actions or to make a proper apology for himself, some portion of him unwilling to be sorry and still begrudging Stewart's foolhardy.

When Mateo arrives home to the bachelor cottage after leaving the hospital, he finds Puck hard at work in the yard, pruning dead boughs from the shrubs and trees and burning the debris in a small, crude fire—the heat from which blares so bright that Mateo can feel it, even from a distance. Puck sweats in droves and wipes his face upon a very filthy handkerchief. Soot and dirt stain his clothing and skin.

Hey, Doc, he says, and Mateo waves to him from across the way.

Mateo cannot imagine that Santana would have allowed Puck into the house today, given Puck's uncleanly state.

And it is strange.

Though Santana avoided Mateo on Monday, on Tuesday, she tarries nearby him. She still does not speak to him much, but she lingers in the dining room until he finishes his meal, and she joins him in the parlor at once upon the completion of her chores, sitting close to his chair upon the sofa coach rather than at her usual perch in the bay window. Whether she follows Mateo due to contrition or because she genuinely wants for his company, Mateo cannot know. He is only certain that he likes having her about.

He smiles at her over the top of his newspaper.

That's a fine stitch you've got going, he compliments her, admiring her fancywork.

Thank you, Papa, she says, blushing.

Only later, when he is about to leave the house for the night, does Mateo discover it: a small parcel wrapped in butcher paper set beside his surgeon's bag on the floor in the foyer. The parcel bears a note written in Santana's hand, and the note reads Please destroy. When Mateo shucks the parcel of its wrappings, he finds that it contains his mother's tarot deck, tied together with twine.

* * *

Mateo still has the tarot deck nestled in his bag two days later when Stewart appears at the door to his office, halting in the deep shadow between the hallway and the room. At once, Mateo starts, not only because he had not expected anyone to disturb his work but also because he does not know what Stewart means to say to him now.

The two men have not spoken to each other in three days—not since the altercation in the hallway.

While they have had other arguments before and even roughhoused from time to time during their college days, they have never quarreled in such a petty and inexplicable way or in a manner like to this one before.

Stewart stands with his hands jammed in his pockets, his body framed directly at the center of the threshold. He wears a dispassionate expression from which Mateo can draw no particular conclusions. If Stewart is very angry, then he is hiding it well. If he is not very angry, then he has yet to reveal it.

Dr. Stewart, Mateo says, remaining in his chair. What brings you to my doorstep?

Mateo means the question either as politeness or as a joke—whichever Stewart might prefer. Though Mateo still hates Stewart's flip attitude concerning the war, he does not hate Stewart and would make amends with Stewart sooner rather than later, if Stewart would have it. Stewart has never made Mateo beg for forgiveness before and neither he Stewart. They've always downplayed their disagreements, sweeping them under rugs and into corners, as gentlemen are wont to do. Mateo will not be disappointed if Stewart accepts his politeness. He will be overjoyed if Stewart makes play off his joke.

Dr. Lopez, Stewart says.

Whatever seams hold Mateo's heart together ignite, cremate, burn to ash.

* * *

For once, Stewart is grave, unflinching. He stares at Mateo like as one would at an incorrect sum tabulated in a book of accounting. Mateo sees now that Stewart is not so much come into the doorframe as he is blocking it. Stewart remains resilient, hands in pockets, and Mateo cannot bring himself to react.

That is your name, isn't it? Stewart asks, taking a step forward into the room. You are Mateo Lopez, son of David and Alma Lopez, formerly of San Juan, Puerto Rico? That is truly who you are—your real identity?

In forty-six years of life, no one has ever called Mateo by his full given name outside the walls of his own home. Only his father, mother, and wife have ever known his given name at all. Santana might not even know it, for Alma always called Mateo Matthew in her presence. She might believe that her father is called Matthew Lopez or Matthew Lucas. Hearing Stewart speak his full given name now puts a squeeze on Mateo's innards, tightens everything inside him. His temples throb with a hard, hot pulse, and he swears in his thoughts by his mother's god.

Stewart, he hears himself say aloud, where have you heard such a strange tale? Is this one of your pranks? Your retribution for that trouble in the hallway?

It surprises Mateo how easily he can lie—how his insides can be so fevered and crushed but his outsides so artful and resolutely calm. He gestures for Stewart to shut the door, to step inside, to sit, to talk, though his every impulse tells him that he ought to run, for he has been discovered at last and now all hope is lost. If Mateo were not in such physical distress, he would wonder if he were rapt in some awful dream. A ringing starts in his ears.

Stewart does shut the door and step inside the room, but he does not sit down. He remains at his full height, stopping three paces from Mateo's desk. He has never worn such a sour expression in all the days that Mateo has known him.

Don't talk your bullshit to me, Stewart says, you—

He obviously does not accept Mateo's lies. He does not just suspect the truth but rather knows it, somehow, most assuredly. And however he knows the truth, Mateo will not dissuade him from it. The tightness inside Mateo squeezes harder, and Mateo wonders if he won't suddenly arrest from the pressure.

How do you know it? he asks quickly, cutting off whatever insult Stewart had meant to pierce him by. No one could have told you. So how do you know?

Stewart gives a scoffing laugh, and his expression turns meaner.

I came, he says, to apologize to you, two days ago at your apartment. It was in the evening, and you were not at home, but your landlord was about. I inquired to him as to your whereabouts, suggesting the pub or the clubhouse or some other haunt. No, no, he said, Dr. Lucas will be at his other property, I'm sure. That's where he takes his suppers. So I went to Gramercy Park to find you, for so great was my need to make amends between us, to repair our friendship—

This last word Stewart spits as though it had a vile flavor upon his tongue. Stewart talks now through a snarl—a look which Mateo has never seen upon his face until today, a meanness so aberrant to Stewart's natural, jocular character. There is something almost ferocious in Stewart, and it transforms him into a stranger, into a creature whom Mateo does not know.

—that I felt that I could not wait until morning to undo the enmity between us. I arrived at your bachelor cottage and opened the gate and was about to come into the yard when I saw it through your parlor window—when I saw the most alluring young Negress in your home.

It took me a moment to recognize that she was the same wee thing who used to sing for us at your supper parties. It took me another moment to see you so nearby to her, both of you in the same place, and you looking upon her most dotingly.

I thought to myself, Dear God, that is it, isn't it? All this time, Matty has had a woman to amuse him and kept her in his second house!

I could not bear to impose upon a scene of surpassing serenity. I thought that I would spare you an intrusion, so I shut the gate and went away.

Here Stewart shakes his head, as if he regrets to tell the next part of the story.

If he regrets to tell it at all, then Mateo reels to hear it.

His emotions blear together until he feels some strange torrent of fear and confusion and outrage whirling within his breast. How dare Stewart spy upon his private dealings! How dare Stewart come anywhere near to Santana and to talk about her so glibly! How could Stewart betray him thusly? How is Stewart betraying him at all?

Stewart had always been Mateo's dearest friend.

What does Stewart mean to say by all of this? Why would he speak this way?

Stewart laughs his scoffing laugh again.

Imagine how it surprised me, then, says he, when just yesterday I learned that the Negress was not your amusement but your daughter. You see, I sought you out again, hoping once more to make amends with you. I came here to your hospital office and found the door to it ajar. You were obviously not about, but I stepped inside to write you a note. In searching for some paper upon which to write my note, I opened a particular drawer in your desk and discovered some older letters. They were all addressed to a David Lopez, and, times being what they are, can you blame me that I decided to read them upon encountering the surname? I had to know if you were a spy.

Mateo, of course, knows precisely the letters that Stewart means and knows precisely their content. Even just reading one or two of them, Stewart would be able to ascertain Mateo's given name and the nation of his birth, as well as his relation to David and Alma. But in reading all of them? Stewart could know everything—about Bonnie, about Santana, about all the matters at the bachelor cottage. He could know all of Mateo's secrets, and Mateo has the dreadful feeling that he does.

You may well be a spy, Stewart says. I am not convinced that you are not. Convenient for the war, hm? And especially with you working at a hospital, attending to young soldiers of the U.S. army? Dear God! To think the girl's your daughter! That you married some nigger from a dance hall! To think that I—that we—that we all—used to envy you! That we thought you were our—our equal! Our friend!

Now Mateo can withhold no longer. For the first time since Stewart began making an explanation, Mateo speaks, stricken.

You have already told Fowler and Wright? Who else have you—?!

I have told no one, Stewart says, suddenly much quieter and more silken than he was before.

Hope kindles for an instant in Mateo like a spark upon a candlewick. Stewart seems almost familiar to Mateo now—so much so that Mateo wonders if perhaps Stewart intends to keep his secret after all, as a dear friend ought to do.

If so, Mateo knows that he will probably lose Stewart's respect and his companionship, as well.

But if Stewart will keep his secret, Mateo can survive, even without Stewart as a friend, and so can Santana.

Mateo holds his breath, wanting.

I have told no one as of yet, Stewart clarifies. However, Stewart continues, I have taken the letters into my possession. I have also taken certain other documents of interest to myself.

What other documents? Mateo demands.

Certain unusual supply record lists and inventory forms, Stewart answers, very matter-of-factly. You see, he says, I had become aware, some months ago, that some of your records did not match those that I had kept, regarding spending on the wards. In reviewing our department finances, I found that you had shorted several orders. Of course, at the time, I thought only that you had—how shall I phrase it?—requisitioned some supplies from the hospital for your private practice, which is, of course, such a small indiscretion, something that we all do, really. I determined to overlook it.

But now, you see, I have your letters—among them a correspondence from a Mr. Jonah Adams, addressed to you, concerning your treatment of a certain boy—Puckerman, I believe it is. The boy's a Jew, isn't he? It seems you see his kind at your practice. It seems you also stole from the hospital to sustain his treatment. And I gather that Puckerman is not the only such charity case. You treat others, don't you? And why wouldn't you? Like helps like, doesn't it?

Stewart speaks as if ridding his mouth of vinegar, like every word is acid upon his tongue. His expression is utterly contemptuous. Any love that he had felt for Mateo as a friend—a near brother—of these so many years is gone, replaced by utter loathing.

Hatred.

I should have known years ago, Stewart says, when I saw you carrying your little pickaninny on the street. That was her, wasn't it? You were out with them—your kind—walking in plain sight, like you—like you have the right! You've made fools of us all. And you've made us vulnerable. If anyone knew that we'd had a nigger-loving nigger-Spaniard on staff, operating at a table—! Did you not realize how you could ruin us?! I suppose you didn't care. Yours is a pedigree bred for cruelty, isn't it? Like a bad dog, dear God.

Something bristles in Stewart, and Mateo flinches, half-expecting Stewart to fly at him from across the desk, to start taking fists to his face. So intense is Stewart's look, so vicious and so fraught, that it wouldn't surprise Mateo if Stewart were to try to kill him now. Mateo quails, but Stewart does not spring. Instead, Stewart's lip curls into the nastiest sneer.

I now present to you some certain conditions, Stewart announces, and if you do not meet them, then I shall have to expose you to our colleagues and make your crimes known to the police.

I expect you know what they do with your kind, during wartime—and especially one as criminal as yourself? You've practiced fraudulent medicine, had a bastard child, fornicated, made an illegal marriage, falsified documents—even kidnapped a nigger, as I'm sure your precious Bonnie's relations will attest. Every patient who has ever died under your care could be considered a murder!

If you care to avoid an investigation, you will do all that I say: first, you shall resign your post at the hospital, close your practice, retire from medicine, and quit the country; second, you shall relieve yourself of the entirety of your fortune to me, who is more worthy to own it; third, you will deed to me your old bachelor house; and, fourth, you'll commend your daughter to me, for I have such need for a new maid, and you know how awfully lonely I've been, what with Daphne gone.

Mateo stands up from his chair.

I will kill you, he says, feeling entirely capable to do so.

Let Stewart come and threaten Mateo and extort him of all his wealth and prestige. Let Stewart call Mateo by all manner of abuses and have Mateo cast into prison—hanged even! But never let Stewart or any force on earth even as much as suggest harm to Santana. Mateo will commit murder to prevent it.

For an instant, something which may be fear flickers in Stewart's gaze, for Mateo's determination to protect Santana must be something which even a bad father like Stewart can understand to some degree.

But then Stewart shakes his head.

You will not, he says, for I have entrusted some of the more telling of your letters along with some explanation of my discoveries to my lawyers to be distributed to Fowler and Wright in the event of my death. Do you not suppose that they would deal with you then just as I do now—and especially Wright, with his son who is an officer in the army, fighting your kind?

In truth, it is difficult for Mateo to imagine forthright Fowler and bumbling Wright dealing with him as cruelly as Stewart does so now—but, then again, Mateo would never have imagined that Stewart could deal with him cruelly before today, either.

Mateo sinks back down into his chair, the flames inside him beaten back. He withers.

I will allow you one week, Stewart says, to make the necessary arrangements, and then if you have not complied to my conditions, I will go first to the Chair of Surgery and then to the authorities of justice and then to the War Department, if I must.

For a moment, Stewart is silent, and Mateo can hear nothing but the ringing in his ears, but then Stewart speaks once more.

You understand, don't you, old dog? he says.

Stewart does not wait for Mateo's answer before taking leave of the room, abandoning Mateo to the consideration of all that he has said.

* * *

Though Mateo considers himself a pacifist, he has always had something of a fight in him—or at least he has had it since those days when his parents stipulated that he would either sever his ties to Bonnie or else he would be their son no more. Mateo fought then, raged and railed against his parents' unkindness. He continued in that fight until this last month, when finally both his father and mother were dead.

It is Mateo's first instinct to fight again now, to take some action against Stewart.

He considers, at first, coercion in kind—making public all of Stewart's indiscretions and dalliances with women, airing Stewart's gambling and money problems, even inventing allegations against Stewart if he must—but then he realizes that if Stewart responds by publishing the letters and hospital documents, it will be his own uncorroborated word against Stewart's copious evidence, and no one would esteem the word of a man like him over the evidence of a man like Stewart.

It is only in pursuing this course of thought that Mateo realizes what he himself truly is and how others will perceive him if they know his secrets—how valueless they will count him, how much they will despise him for overreaching bounds.

Mateo considers, for a moment, fleeing, taking Santana away with him to Spain, but then he remembers the war and that he would never secure permission to travel to a country with which the United States is in conflict.

Mateo also ascertains his own folly in ever supposing that he could easily travel with Santana out-of-country at all. He and Santana could no more visit Portugal or Italy than they could Spain, for who would allow them to cross the ocean as passengers in the same class on a ship? No one would, as long as Mateo Lopez was still Matthew Lucas and Santana his housemaid and not his legally acknowledged daughter. Mateo could perhaps ask Puck to travel in steerage with Santana and bribe the boy with a great fortune to act as Santana's protector, but would it really be kind of him to turn Santana's care over to Puck? Would it really do her any good? If Mateo Lopez were to be Mateo Lopez, the situation would be just as hopeless. He would be a spy, a traitor, an enemy to the state. No one would ever allow him on a ship.

There may as well be no such place as Spain, no Old World over the ocean.

Mateo will never see it.

Maybe Mateo and Santana could go away somewhere in Canada or the States, but to where and how? Mateo does not have a license to practice medicine outside the state of New York. While he and Santana could survive on savings without an income, where could they go where they would not attract attention—and how could Mateo manage to move them to someplace new in the space of only just one week? Mateo would require an alias, falsified documentation, and connections for both himself and his daughter.

He needs more time.

He needs to be able to breathe.

Though his pride protests against it, Mateo considers that he might perhaps beg Stewart to consent to different terms. Mateo would retire from medicine and deed the bachelor cottage to Stewart if only Stewart would allow Mateo to keep Santana in safety and maintain some money by which to support her. Mateo would become Stewart's servant, if Stewart liked it. Mateo would do most anything except to turn his daughter over to harm.

Stewart's words still ring in Mateo's ears, and the image of Stewart's hateful looks still sears Mateo's near memories, and yet Mateo can scarcely comprehend that Stewart—his friend, his old amiable and foolish scoundrel!—should persecute him so.

Mateo had loved Stewart as a brother, and he had thought that Stewart felt the same.

Why should Mateo's surname matter so much to Stewart? Why should Mateo's father's blood mean more to Stewart than all their shared hours together, their schooldays at Columbia, their adventures at the medical college and as interns and young doctors and now at last professors on the hospital faculty? Are they not the same men now as they have always been?

A terrible truth occurs to Mateo then.

Even a fox which learns to heel will never be a hunting hound, never mind the color of its coat.

* * *

Mateo cannot bear to take the streetcar home, for he cannot bear to brush arms and knees against so many persons who would revile to touch him, if only they knew his name. He feels pummeled as if he had been beaten, as if his insides bruise and break. When he leaves the hospital, the evening sun burns his eyes. He squints and hails a hack. When the hack driver calls him Master Doctor, he thinks to himself, I am, I am, I am, wanting more than believing, clinging more than holding.

All the way to Gramercy Park, Mateo slumps against the bench and rubs his hands along his face, nauseated and dizzy. He knows he must compose himself before he arrives at home. He doesn't want to distress Santana or alert her to his problems—not until he has found an answer to them. He would not know how to explain to her what happenings have befallen him today, what happenings have befallen them today, their family.

Though Mateo has traveled from the Bellevue to the bachelor cottage so many times before, he feels somehow as if he sees the city for the first time now—really sees it as it is rather than how he might prefer it to be. It's dirty, ugly, and populated by many people who are at once invisible and too visible, never able to hide but never fully seen, either. Will Mateo soon be one of them? Will Santana? Mateo loosens his necktie, feeling choked, noosed.

When the hack stops in front of the bachelor cottage, Mateo does not disembark from it immediately. A spring breeze flitters cool through his hair. The sky above is an insurmountable American blue. Mateo closes his eyes and leans back, turning his face to the sun as if he were a flower in its bloom. Light plays trapped behind his eyes in flashes, like fishes swimming in a school, and late May heat warms him.

It is almost a beautiful day, or it would be one, if.

Master Doctor, says the hack driver, are you coming along?

I am, I am, I am, Mateo thinks. He nods to the fellow and opens his eyes. When he pays for his ride, he crushes a five dollar note into the fellow's palm. The fellow is astonished at the sum. Mateo is astonished at everything.

* * *

After so many of those early nights spent with Santana's tiny body curled, warm, at the crook of his shoulder, Mateo ought to know: his baby is sensitive.

Santana intuits Mateo's moods and knows whenever he bears trouble in himself. She has been able to read him since before she could even hold his gaze or speak. Over the years, she has only honed her powers of discernment and become more literate in the language of him. Sometimes, Mateo thinks that Santana understands him better than he understands himself.

Mateo stops in the parlor after doffing his shoes, jacket, and bag. He slumps down onto the piano bench, cradling his head in his hands, running his fingers through his slick, sun-hot hair. He barely breathes.

Before she even sees him, Santana calls from the kitchen, Papa, is something the matter?

Mateo attempts to muster a reply, but his voice is like fresh-picked cotton in his throat—soft and flossed from air, easily crushed to nothing. He opens his mouth and closes it. His silence lasts for too long. Santana appears in the parlor, curious, her cooking abandoned in the kitchen, for the moment. She wipes her hands on her apron, studying Mateo's face to see if he fares well or not.

Papa, are you all right? she asks.

He nods, clears his throat. Yes, he gasps, quiet at first. Then louder, Yes, of course I am. I am only tired, is all. We're still getting those army recruits through the hospital.

Santana nods, sympathetic. She sits down on the bench at Mateo's side, so close that their elbows meet. You ought to stay here tonight and rest, she suggests. I just put fresh sheets on the bed in the guest quarters this morning. Everything is made up for you, if you like.

All her old earnestness has returned to her, and she seems somehow both younger and older than she is at once. She skims her feet against the floor, moving them through a length of light as if the light were a puddle.

Her offer tempts Mateo greatly, for he is suddenly surpassingly tired and can feel the longing for sleep in his neck, eyes, and face. If he could go upstairs, sleep, and wake to find that none of this horridness had ever happened, he would gladly do so. However, as it is, Mateo cannot allow himself to rest until he has some solution to this issue with Stewart. Mateo cannot pause until he has some means by which to keep his daughter safe.

Mateo attempts a smile for Santana and grimaces.

Thank you, peach, he says, but I have some business to which I must attend to tonight. I must return to my apartment after supper so that I can review some papers and records. Some other time.

He expects Santana to object, but she does not.

Her hand covers his upon the bench, her fingers threading into the gaps between his from above. She offers him a kind smile—a real and careful one—and he sees it from the corner of his eye. As long as you are well, she says.

Of course, my love, he lies.

* * *

Mateo eats because he must make Santana believe he has an appetite. He smokes a pipe after dinner and reads the newspaper because it is usual that he do so, and Santana must believe that he is as usual. He remains at the bachelor cottage until his regular hour of departure and then makes to leave, as he regularly would do so, so that Santana will suspect nothing.

Are you sure you won't stay? she asks him.

I cannot stay, Mateo says. But I shall see you tomorrow.

When he arrives back at his apartment, he collapses onto his chair.

God damn it, he says into the darkness, though he does not typically make it his habit to speak aloud when he is alone.

Mateo does not sleep that night and instead paces the floor, thinking through his situation again and again and again.

Throughout his life, Mateo has intermittently wondered what might happen to him should someone ever discover his secrets and learn his true identity, but he never imagined that it would come to pass in such a way as it has.

In his desperation, Mateo considers hiring a family to testify in court that they are Santana's true parents. If he could find some man and woman like enough in complexion and appearance to Santana that they could pass for her relations, then he could claim that the letters asserting his paternity were Stewart's forgery.

Mateo has read of certain unscrupulous women who advertise their services as fake mistresses for hire in the newspapers. These women will come forward to testify in court that they have dallied with this or that married man, in order that the man's wife may obtain a divorce from him on account of adultery. The divorcing wife pays the hired mistress a great sum of money in exchange for the hired mistress's perjury under oath.

Could Mateo perhaps hire someone to make a legal claim on Santana?

If so, then Mateo could deny that he had fathered a child out of wedlock. He could also deny that he was ever the son of Puerto Ricans. He could say that Stewart had fabricated everything concerning his supposed family life.

Were Mateo able to disavow the letters, then the only charges on which Stewart could prove his guilt would be those regarding his thievery from the hospital. Mateo would most certainly lose his job as a surgeon and professor on account of those charges, but what a small cost that would be to him, compared to everything else!

But how could Mateo ever bring himself to publish such a hideous lie? To even consider saying that Santana is not his child causes Mateo's heart to feel rent in two from the center and not even along the seams. It drives a messy, anguished pain through Mateo's chest to attempt to imagine explaining the situation to Santana—for surely she would have to testify in court, as well—and he cannot abide it. Santana would believe that Mateo felt ashamed of her. She would feel unwanted and used. How could Mateo ever bear to see such raw hurt in Santana's countenance?

He is her papa, and how could he claim otherwise?

Mateo has never loved anything as he loves Santana. Mateo has never been so proud of and bonded to and protective of any other entity on earth.

Mateo battles himself in his mind, forcing himself to consider if he could lie in such a way in order to save Santana. If he knew and she knew that he were only abandoning his claim on her because there were no other way, could he do so? The possibility would only matter if Mateo could find someone both willing and able to corroborate his fabrication, and he most certainly will not. He hasn't the time. He hasn't the wherewithal. He doesn't know where or how he would even begin to search for such a person.

Perhaps if his mother were still alive.

Perhaps if Bonnie's family gave one damn about Santana at all.

Perhaps if they didn't hate Mateo.

Mateo is caged, and he cannot batter himself against the bars of his cage hard enough in order to break them down. He can only frustrate himself, bruising his hands and legs and even face, as he tosses himself against his barriers with all his bodily force.

Is it not enough that he has been a respectable citizen? A good doctor? A teacher? An upstanding member of the community? Nothing has changed about him. If the world so loves Matthew Lucas, why can they not love Mateo Lopez?

What if Mateo were to enlist in the army, in the medical corps? Could they then say that he were not a patriot? Would doing so be enough to save him? Could he send Santana down to one of those Negro seminaries in the South while he was at training? Could he marry her to a Fisk man, like Du Bois? Put her in with the talented tenth?

Mateo's mind frazzles, thinking of one million possibilities, each one more unlikely and desperate than the last, but the simple dilemma remains: Mateo can think of no way to both exonerate himself and to guarantee Santana's safety and his ability to keep her.

If Mateo refuses to submit to Stewart's conditions, then Stewart will expose him, and if Stewart exposes him, then he will, at best, become a prisoner of the state, and, at worst, go to Southwick's electrical chair—and who knows what would happen to Santana then? Stewart would either claim her or she would end up on the streets. She is too old, after all, to become a ward of the state. She is of age. As the daughter of a criminal, she would stand to inherit nothing, even if Mateo attempted to make provisions for her. All at once, she would lose her father, her home, and her every possession. She would have no place to go.

However, if Mateo submits to Stewart's conditions, Santana's fate will prove worse yet. Stewart will have her then, and he will abuse her in the most abominable ways imaginable to man. Whereas before Mateo always humored Stewart's impropriety with women, and in his younger days perhaps even admired it or at least found it amusing, now Mateo rages to think of all the vile things that Stewart might do to his daughter, to the point where something nearly bursts in Mateo like a main.

He wants to kill Stewart.

He could obtain a revolver and shoot.

He could kill Stewart's lawyers.

He could kill Fowler and Wright and anyone who could otherwise ruin him.

He could become a murderer and take Santana away with him to the West, where they would be outlaws and live on the run from bounty-men and rangers. If anyone ever got too close to them, he could shoot them right between the eyes.

The main bursts, and Mateo weeps as he has not done since Bonnie died, falling down onto his knees and clutching at his throat. He cannot breathe, not even after he pops the top button on his collar. Heat and blood pool in his face, and his skin flushes, fevered. He feels battered like a hailstoned home, beaten on every side as if by invisible fists. He cannot breathe, and he would sooner die than to allow any harm to befall his Santana.

* * *

When morning comes, Mateo does not know what to do except to dress himself and report to the hospital for work. There, he completes his duties mechanically, tending to his postoperative patients, critiquing his students, and even lancing a boil, all without attuning himself to his work even just the slightest whit. Throughout the entirety of his shift, Mateo thinks almost solely of Santana and of what a great disservice he has done to her by keeping her locked away at the bachelor cottage for all her life.

Though she is now nearly nineteen years in age, Santana has never interacted with the world before—not even to purchase goods from vendors on the street or to take a stroll down Park Avenue. Mateo has always arranged to have groceries delivered for her to the house. He has not allowed her to socialize with persons her own age, excepting Noah Puckerman. He has kept her isolated and, in some ways, trapped in time. Grown though her body and mind may be, concerning her level of worldly experience, Santana is still a child, and has never even had a friend to call her own.

She has had no preparation for the kind of difficult life that will become hers if Mateo does nothing to prevent it.

Just thinking of her frightened or hurt or alone tears Mateo's heart anew.

While carried away in such thoughts, Mateo supervises an intern suturing a wound on the ward. The intern fumbles with his work, and Mateo seizes the needle from him with a savage motion.

Watch me, Mateo says and sits, beginning to repair the mistake—except that soon he fumbles the work, as well, dipping the needle too deep under the skin, puncturing muscle and causing the patient to cry out in pain.

The intern squirms, uncomfortable to see his instructor fail, and, for a moment, Mateo knows not what to do or how to proceed. The needle remains stabbed deeply into the tissue, and the patient curses loudly.

What have you done? comes Fowler, appearing from around the curtain. Dr. Lucas, you must remove the needle!

It is only because Fowler calls him Lucas that Mateo is able to continue.

Something in the alias jars him, though not for the usual reason. He knows now that it was never his name—that it belongs to some poor, mistaken fool who dreamed himself into existence. He is not deluded like that fool. Not anymore. He can see everything most clearly. He extricates the needle, keeping pressure on the patient's white, white flesh around the sutures. The patient yelps again but scarcely bleeds.

There you are, says Fowler, tapping Mateo's shoulder most approvingly.

There I am, Mateo repeats.

* * *

It is just before Mateo is about to go home to Santana that it happens—that he arrives to the top of the staircase in the Bellevue entrance hall, ready to descend it, and looks down to see Stewart passing on the floor below him.

Stewart espies Mateo, as well, and their eyes meet from across the expanse, Mateo perched at a height and Stewart below him on the main floor.

It is the first time they have encountered each other since yesterday.

Mateo halts where he stands, as if skewered clean through.

Stewart is suddenly someone whom Mateo has never before seen.

In the next instant, rage pulses, white, over Mateo's vision, and he imagines himself leaping down the fifteen intervening stairs, landing atop Stewart, beating the bastard senseless. The bones in Mateo's hands almost feel the blows he craves to land, and he tenses and releases his fists again and again, thinking of how he could batter Stewart into an irrecoverable coma, putting Stewart upon the threshold of death but keeping Stewart from crossing over it. What then? What would Stewart's will stipulate? What would the lawyers do?

It surprises Mateo to discover a knowing look in Stewart's eyes, as if Stewart can perceive his thoughts. Stewart sneers and offers just the slightest shake of his head, as if to say, No, no, like Mateo were a toddler in need of a quick reprimand. There is a cockiness in Stewart, a smugness. He knows that Mateo wants to destroy him but cannot. He revels in Mateo's impotence.

In the end, Mateo can do nothing, for he is constrained on every side by where he is and who he is and what will happen to Santana if he does anything untoward. He watches Stewart pass by him, free, while he himself remains in shackles, unable to run either this way or that. Only after a full minute does he fully unfurl his fists.

Upon examination, he sees that his fingernails have left crescent-shaped cuts embedded bloody against the flesh of his palms.

* * *

Mateo cannot eat and cannot sleep and feels as winnowed down as scrimshawed bone. So much more fervent must be his strivings to keep Santana from discovering his secret. He must guard his face, his eyes, his thoughts and compel himself to engage when he is with her.

Let us go for a walk around the garden together now that we've had supper, Santana announces, politely declining to remark upon how Mateo has scarcely tasted his meal. Let us have some fresh air. It is a good evening, isn't it, Papa?

And so Mateo goes.

Santana holds him at the elbow as if they were on a promenade. They walk through wafting floral scent, heady blooms of early summer, crossing the air-paths of industrious bees. There is green around them, late May life. Puck has done beautiful work, keeping up the yard. Alma's roses are perhaps even better tended to now than they were when she was alive.

You ought to stay at the bachelor cottage tonight, Santana says. You can sleep with the bedroom window open. It will be better for you here, where there are trees and plants, than at your stuffy apartment.

How do you know that my apartment is stuffy? Mateo asks. You have never been there before.

Santana smirks. Well, is it stuffy?

It surprises Mateo when he manages to feel amusement.

It is, he admits, missing something he has not yet lost.

* * *

Santana begs Mateo again to stay the night at the house, and again he declines to do so, citing his usual excuse concerning his landlord's strict expectations for his conduct. Of course, Mateo's real reason for declining to stay at the house is because he wants so much to do so. He knows that he must not linger with Santana or else he will never leave her, and leave her he must if he is to save her.

Some other night, precious, he says, already feeling so immensely far away.

Again, he does not sleep, and he passes the night imagining the vainest hopes—that he might stand before some worldly tribunal and explain using his best words and most honest exhortations how immensely he loves his daughter and how he would do anything for her. He imagines that his efforts could be enough, that someone in authority would say, Yes, yes, this is an upright man, and he does deserve to love, as other men love, and to have his peace and safety, as all men deserve to have such, too.

* * *

Mateo spends Saturday morning at his apartment, thinking about the nurse who assisted with Puck's surgery. He considers, vaguely, that he could send Santana to live with the nurse as a maid. The nurse was good to her own Matilda. Perhaps she could be good to Mateo's Santana, as well.

Such an arrangement might work, but Mateo doubts his own ability to persuade the nurse to agree to it, for he would have to tell her the truth about himself before Stewart published it to the world or else before he quit the hospital, as per Stewart's conditions. If Mateo did not confess the truth to the nurse at all, then he would have to trust that the nurse would treat Santana well without knowing that Santana is his daughter, and Santana herself would have to maintain the secret of her paternity forever while she was under the nurse's employ.

If the nurse knew the truth, she might not want to help Mateo, not due to prejudice but in order to preserve herself, for soon Mateo will be considered a criminal and dealing with him will be dangerous. If the nurse never knew the truth, for Santana, it would mean more secrets, more lies, and more taking chances about who is trustworthy and who is not.

Santana would have to be something other than she is, for Mateo has raised her to be a lady and to manage her own household, not to be a servant. She would have to forget her past at the bachelor cottage, her refinements, her education, her expectations for comfort.

Such is not the best life Mateo can provide for Santana—or at least it is not the type of life to which Santana is accustomed.

Mateo can do better, and he must.

He readies himself to leave his apartment, noting, as he passes by a mirror, that his hair has grown too long of late.

* * *

Coming home to the bachelor cottage, Mateo happens upon Puck at the fence in the front yard.

Hey, Doc! Puck says brightly, tongue pinched, pink, between his teeth as he chisels rust away from the metal gate with the pick-end of a file.

Puck wears his sleeves rolled to his elbows, and his head shines with sweat under a persistent sun. He is the picture of diligence, tending to his duties. As Mateo passes by him, Puck strikes the file with a mallet, and a fleck of rust skitters away from the ironwork.

Whatever the little miss is cooking for you tonight smells pretty good, Puck says jovially, nodding toward the house. She's got the kitchen window open, and I'm surprised that everyone in the neighborhood ain't lined up outside it, waiting for a plate.

There is something very pleasant about the way Puck talks now, though Mateo has not found anything particularly pleasant for the last several days since the onset of this trouble with Stewart. Mateo pauses along the pathway to the front door. He admires Puck's handiwork with the gate.

It is then that Mateo makes a decision.

I shall have to hurry to have my place in line, then, he says.

Puck smirks at Mateo's joke.

Sure thing, Doc, he says.

* * *

That evening, Mateo chats with Santana over supper.

Puck has made the yard look very nice, he says.

She nods, serving a spoonful of pigeon peas onto Mateo's plate with a ladle and passing the plate back to Mateo. He certainly has a way with the flowers, she agrees. And who would have ever supposed?

His leg has healed up nicely, Mateo says. I expect he'll want to return to his traveling circus soon.

I expect he will, too, Santana says, now serving herself some pigeon peas. Just yesterday he told me how his circus travels through the Midwestern states and said that there is nothing as splendid as a Midwestern summer. I can hardly imagine a summer outside the city. Can you?

She reaches for her fork and begins to stir her rice and peas together upon her plate. Mateo hesitates, watching her, but then ventures a try.

What a shame it will be to see him go, he says.

Santana takes some rice and peas onto her plate, gold and green together. A shame, she parrots, taking a bite. She doesn't meet Mateo's eyes. Will you hire another gardener to replace him?

Mateo takes a bite of peas for himself. Actually, he says, I had considered asking Puck to stay on. I might offer him a raise, entice him somehow.

Santana raises her eyes from her plate, suddenly more interested in the conversation than she had been just an instant before. Her expression is unfamiliar to Mateo and divulges to him nothing that he can understand. Mateo wonders if she is very amenable to keeping Puck at the bachelor cottage, then. He certainly hopes that she is. He needs her to be.

You ought to, she says, a funny note in her voice.

Puck is the first young man Santana has ever met—perhaps the only young man Santana ever will meet.

Mateo has made his decision.

* * *

Again, Santana asks Mateo to stay the night at the bachelor cottage, and, again, he declines to do so. He returns to his apartment and works furiously through the night and into the next day making lists, composing documents, and arranging an itinerary.

He paces and rages and smokes seven pipes. He drinks brandy straight from a bottle. Over and over again, he rehearses to himself the words he must say and how he must say them. He hates Stewart so much that doing so exhausts him, and he soon falls into a fevered sleep upon his chair, a bottle in his hand.

As Mateo sleeps, he dreams of playing blind man's bluff with every person who was ever important to him. Though he wears a blindfold, he can still see his father, mother, and colleagues around him. The Chair of Surgery is nearby, as are Bradley and Puck, and several of Mateo's old schoolmasters and professors. Fowler and Wright knock into each other, and Stewart lingers close to the back of the room, sneering. Santana stands just a few feet off from Mateo, and she wears a blindfold, too. While Mateo fumbles about wildly, he can't seem to set his hands on anyone. Bonnie leans against the doorframe and laughs her pretty laugh, one hand pressed daintily to her mouth.

Mateo calls out in Spanish, ¿Dónde estás?

But no one answers him.

When Mateo awakens upon the chair, the sun is setting outside. He had fallen asleep on Sunday morning, and now it is Sunday evening. He is late for supper at the bachelor cottage and must hurry to hail a hack to travel there at once.

Santana waits in the bay window for him, wide-eyed and worried. When she sees him striding up the walk, she rushes away from the window and, in the next second, throws open the front door to the house, standing at the threshold, the electric lights behind her bright against the gathering dusk.

Papa, where have you been? she gasps. I had thought something terrible must have happened to delay you—

Nothing terrible, Mateo assures her. I had some business to which to attend, that's all. I am well enough, my love.

He takes all three stairs to the stoop at once and arrives before her wearing his most winning smile. With one hand he reaches for her, pulls her towards him, and greets her with a kiss to the top of her hair, as he has not done for some while.

For one split instant, Santana resists his motion, but then she perceives his intention and allows his lips to linger at her head. She curls her hand about his wrist, so that she holds him as he holds her, and they are linked together.

Some seconds pass during which father and daughter linger at a limens—between dark and light, indoors and out, everything that has come before and everything which shall come afterwards.

Mateo has never showed so much love to Santana in a place where someone could potentially see him doing so before.

Santana's hair bears a slight dampness, for she has already had her Sunday evening bath, undoubtedly in waiting for Mateo to come home. She smells of skin and scented soap. A rush of heat blooms from her from the surprise of this sudden closeness.

In a trice, the kiss is done. Mateo releases Santana from their pose, and she relinquishes his wrist. Though she will quickly forget the moment, Mateo will not. He holds to it as if it were an heirloom treasure in his hand. His heart seams give a stronger tug than even usually they do. Santana is still his little girl, as she has always been.

You smell like pipe smoke, Santana notes, making a scrunched face.

Mateo laughs at the observation. Do you still have supper for me, peach? he asks. Never mind if it is cold.

It's very cold, Papa, Santana sighs, but you may have it, if you like.

I would like, Mateo says, for after supper, I must speak to Mr. Puckerman.

* * *

By the time Mateo finishes his meal and emerges from the house into the yard, it is fully dark outside, and the neighborhood is falling to sleep. There are no stars, for the electric lights of New York conceal them in the sky, but the night is clear and visited by tiny white-winged moths, which flurry through the gardens on soft, small whisper wings.

Mateo walks across the grass rather than down the paved path. The shed is already dark inside, but Mateo knows that Puck is not asleep. He knocks upon the door and waits, listening to settling city sounds—to the distant, tin warbler of a gramophone playing from one of his neighbor's parlor rooms through an open window.

After some seconds, the door to the shed opens, and Puck appears, looking alternately frazzled and wary. I was just going to bed, Doc, he starts. Honest! I just had to—

May I come inside, Puck? Mateo asks, calm.

Oh, sure thing, Puck says, stepping back to allow Mateo inside. Let me light a lantern.

Of course.

Puck brushes past Mateo, moving with a pleasing ease through the deep shadow inside the shed. He jostles something and jostles something else, fidgets against some metal, and suddenly produces light from a kerosene lamp with a knob. A low, yellow glow pervades the space, casting deep chiaroscuro relief against Puck's face and assuredly Mateo's, as well.

Sorry about the mess, Puck apologizes, indicating his boots kicked carelessly across the floor, one after the other, as if in stride, and some of the contents of his rucksack spilled out beside his unmade cot bed. Would you like to sit down? he asks, indicating the shed's single wooden chair, while he situates himself on the edge of his bed, the light jangling along with him, the lantern wobbling from his hand.

That's all right, Mateo demurs. I hope that our conversation will be straightforward enough that it will prove brief.

Even in the dim light, Mateo perceives the shock of fear which flashes across Puck's face. At once, Mateo realizes that he has made a bad beginning to his offer—that he has inadvertently given Puck reason to fear a reprimand, though really he does not intend to reprimand Puck at all.

I have an offer to make you, he says quickly, hoping to allay Puck's worries. You see, your work as of late has pleased me very well. The yard is most handsome, better than it has been in years. I perceive that you are eager to return to your Mr. Adams and his traveling circus. However, I would be much remiss if I did not make some attempt to keep you on here, for, as a truth, I greatly value your services.

If I could entice you to stay on as my gardener, I would increase your pay substantially and set it down in writing that you were to remain under my employ indefinitely. You would never need to fear losing your job. You would always have a place to live here. All I would require from you would be your word that you would not abandon this estate but remain here permanently. I would pay you twice what Adams did—three times as much, if I had to.

Golly, Doc, Puck says, mouth gaping open. You already pay me twice what I make at the circus, and I'm sure not worth that much at all—

You underestimate your value, Mateo says honestly. I suppose that everyone underestimates you. I hope not to make that particular mistake with you myself. Please say that you'll stay on. You seem to find it agreeable, living here. You seem to—and here Mateo hesitates, perhaps about to say too much—you seem to enjoy Miss Lopez's company, do you not? And she has already agreed to remain on staff here permanently herself. She shall have rule of the house and you the whole estate. Don't you enjoy her company?

Puck flusters, shifting on the bed, sloshing lantern light about. His eyes dart this way and then that. I—uh—I mean, she's swell, he stammers.

So won't you stay on with her? Mateo presses. Stay on here and promise me that you will care for the estate and everything and everyone in it—that you will care for her. As a gentleman, Mr. Puckerman, I ask your word. Please.

The vehemence with which Mateo makes his implorations seems to startle Puck, who cannot ascertain why Mateo wants so much to retain him at the house. Puck glances again this way and that and makes a sound of deliberation, obviously at great odds with himself.

Of course, Mateo remembers well how Puck spoke about the circus proprietor Adams. He knows that Puck considers Adams his savior and loves the man as a father. He also knows how Puck loves his life at the circus itself and has maintained a wanderlust for the place even after these many months spent in New York City. Mateo would be a fool to suppose that these loves don't weigh heavy on the scales of Puck's heart. Now Mateo has only to wonder if the promise of an income—even an attractive one—will be enough to tip the balance over.

At last Puck seems to gather his words.

Yeah, all right, Doc, he says. Yeah, you got it. I'm your man.

So I have your word as a gentleman? Mateo presses, needing to be sure.

Puck finally meets Mateo's gaze. The boy's jaw sets, firm. Course you do, Puck says. I'll take care of it all, Doc. You can count on me.

* * *

Mateo shakes on the deal with Puck and exits the shed. However, he does not return to the house right away. Instead, he stands in the garden, shrouded beneath the long, inky shadows of the hedges and trellises, and smokes a pipe—a single orange glow visible against the vast dark. He shoves his unused hand in his pocket and rocks on the soles of his shoes. He thinks of his father. He thinks of Bonnie. His mother. Santana. And now that he has Mr. Puckerman's vow to remain at the bachelor cottage for life, he knows precisely what he must do.

If Mateo is proactive and successfully executes his plan prior to Stewart's deadline, he will be able to save Santana and ensure her continued well-being and maintenance for all of her days. If Mateo waits until Stewart's deadline, he will have no such recourse—he will lose everything, including Santana, who is precious to him above everything else, above measure and even his own ability to comprehend how so.

Santana will lose out either way, but at least if Mateo heads Stewart off at the pass, she will end up with something and even someone to show for her loss. Santana will not be entirely alone. She will not be destitute. She will be cared for. And even if it comes out that Santana is Mateo's child after all is done, she will ultimately fare better as the daughter of a dead man than as the daughter of a traitor, criminal, thief, and even murderer.

She may even be better off without Mateo in her life altogether, for it seems to him now that almost every choice he has ever made for her leading up to this one has turned out to be dreadfully wrong.

Everything is now incumbent upon Mateo taking action before Stewart can do so, on his word becoming final before Stewart's does so.

So in four day's time, Mateo must die, and how strange it is, he thinks as his tobacco turns sour, that it all must be so—that everything must amount to such an ignominious and wasteful end.

Mateo has three nights left to enjoy on earth. He is not a Christian, so he does not suppose that taking his own life is a sin. Though some would call it a cowardly escape, he knows better and is weirdly content now within himself concerning his decision, for he knows that it is the only way that he can save his poor Santana and ensure that she will continue in a life where she is no one's servant, where she maintains her autonomy and the level of domestic comfort which has always been her privilege.

If Santana someday marries Noah Puckerman, so be it. If she keeps him only as her friend and someone to talk to around the house, so be it, as well.

Mateo has adopted the Roman outlook and changed from a Romantic to a Stoic. He is now as Brutus was in yore, and he feels brave about it, even if no one else will ever believe—or even know—that he was so.

His only regret is that he will cause Santana sorrow. He does not want to leave her, and he misses her already, in a preemptive, longing way. He fears, of course, that she will blame herself for his death—that her belief in Alma's ridiculous curse will cause her to feel guilt for a happening that is Stewart's fault alone. If he could think of some other way to go about this business, he would.

Mateo's only hope is that the provisions he makes for Santana will assure her of how well he has loved her—that she will see from the way that he has arranged everything for her benefit, to the extent that he is able, that she has been the axis of his universe since the day of her birth and that every star in his sky has shined for her and will continue to do so forever, even after he is gone.

Moths hover near the glow of Mateo's pipe until at last it burns out, with nothing left in it to smoke. Now Mateo must brace himself and return to the house. He fears to see Santana, now that his plan is set, for how will he ever leave her tonight, knowing that he must soon leave her evermore?

* * *

By the time Mateo reenters the house, Santana has already changed into her bedclothes. She wears a dressing robe and sits on the sofa couch, thumbing through a book of lithographs depicting artwork at the Parisian Louvre, though she does not read any of the captions in the book or at least does not do so carefully. When Mateo enters the parlor, she looks up at him with dark, wide eyes.

Were your negotiations with Mr. Puckerman favorable to you? she asks.

Mateo fights a grimace. He nods, even-faced. Puck has agreed to stay on, he says.

Congratulations, then, Papa, Santana says, smiling at him.

Congratulations? he repeats, disoriented, for an instant, because Puck's consent means one thing to Santana and one very different thing to himself.

Yes, on securing his agreement, Santana explains. You seemed very much to want him to stay on, and now he won't go back to his circus. Do you suppose they will miss him at all?

He can write to his Mr. Adams, if he feels to, Mateo shrugs, minding himself not to stare at Santana for too long, not to do anything that might startle her or suggest to her his designs. It is imperative that she not know anything of what is to come.

Santana glances toward the clock on the wall. Papa, you really ought to stay here tonight, she says. It is so late, and you've had a long day. Couldn't you sleep upstairs?

When Mateo forces a smile, he feels as if his mouth is made from very stubborn rubber, barely elastic. No, peach, not tonight, he declines. I have so very many things I must do tomorrow. I must away.

Santana sets the book of lithographs down upon the table. She pulls her dressing robe around her more tightly, though the night is warm. So will you come late again tomorrow? she asks, furrowing her brow.

I hope not to, Mateo says.

Santana's brow relaxes. She nods, appeased. All right, she says, accepting her papa's words as his promise.

* * *

Mateo does not report to work at either the hospital or his office on Monday. Instead, he visits a general store in Kips Bay, where he purchases a large bottle of liquid arsenic rat poison, and then travels by hack to Union Square, where he arrives at the office of his father's lawyers—his lawyers now, he supposes—and presents to them his newly revised will, the stipulations of which are simple and which the lawyers will find in perfect order.

The will lists the assets of Mateo's estate, which include his sizeable personal fortune, his inheritance from his father and the sale of his father's estate, and, most importantly, the bachelor cottage and all its accessories.

Amongst the accessories, Mateo has listed two permanent, full-time staff members: one Mr. Noah Puckerman, gardener, groundskeeper, and estate warden; and one Ms. Anna Louise Lucas, maid, housekeeper, and cook.

Mateo has stipulated that, upon the event of his death, all of his worldly fortune that does not go to accommodate his burial, funerary arrangements, charitable contributions, and death taxes will move to a certain prearranged trust fund, a legacy he created some seventeen years ago, upon the death of his father. That trust fund will exist for the continual maintenance of the bachelor cottage estate, covering its domestic expenses and upkeep.

The fund will also provide payment for the permanent full-time employees, the previously named Mr. Puckerman and Ms. Lucas, for as long as they are living. The will includes a provision for the increase of their salaries based on inflation over time. It also stipulates that if the employees marry either each other or other persons, their spouses and any issue produced from their union or unions will receive payment from the trust, as well, to sums which Mateo has determined in advance but which may also be subject to increase to account for inflation.

All day-to-day expenses for the maintenance of the bachelor cottage, such as for the purchasing of foods and other household items, will be at the discretion of Ms. Lucas, in accordance to the allowance that the trust permits.

The executors of Mateo's will are to be the collective Grolier Club Board of Directors, and it is to the Grolier Club that Mateo deeds the bachelor cottage. He states that the Groliers may make use of the house and property for club business and the establishment of a secondary library, per their discretion, though they do not have the power to terminate the employment of any of the full-time employees or to remove any of the full-time employees from living on the premises. All decisions affecting the estate must be ratified by a unanimous vote of the Board of Directors, and no decisions regarding the estate may override what Mateo's will stipulates.

The will provides that Mateo will be buried at the Green-Wood Cemetery beside his father, Mr. David Lucas. However, it also establishes generous donations to the Woodlawn and Cavalry Cemeteries in the Bronx and Queens, respectively.

It also creates an annual donation to be made to the Bellevue Medical College Hospital in Mateo's name over fifty years to a fixed amount. The annual donation is to be used for the advancement of the medical sciences, the education of medical students and continuing education of doctors, and community outreach initiatives, particularly to benefit the poor and disadvantaged communities of greater Manhattan. It also affords a one-time donation to be made to the Scotia Seminary in Concord, North Carolina for the education of Negro girls.

Finally, the will provides for payment to the Gramercy Park neighborhood association, for privileges related to park-usage, as it relates to the estate.

It is all that Mateo can do—the best that he can offer.

His father's sweat has paid for it, and his sweat has paid for it, and it is his last and best legacy, his dying gift to Santana.

He gives her a new name in the will because she has no birth certificate to prevent him from doing so. He gives her a new name in the will because of the war—because she ought not to seem Spanish at a time when no one in America must be Spanish. He gives her his alias as her surname because he has heard tell that, before the last war, in Southern states, old planters used to grant their surnames to little half-white children born on the plantations, and that it was a kind of love, a kindness.

Let his lawyers see that Matthew Lucas has named Anna Lucas in his will, and let it be kind.

The lawyers agree that the will is in order. They take Mateo's money and his signature. They notarize what he has written, summoning an officer from the courthouse. They thank him for his business and ask if they might assist him in any other way.

He tells them that they cannot.

They are old, white-headed men, and they suppose Mateo strange for visiting their office on a Monday afternoon, bearing a will that he has written in his own hand, though he is a young man, by their standards, and surely has other places to be and other errands to which to attend.

Mateo does have those places and those errands, so he bids his lawyers a good day.

Thank you, Doctor Lucas, they tell him.

Thank you, Mateo says, taking his leave out to the street, where he hails a hack for the Bronx.

* * *

Bonnie's grave is not so different today than it was two years ago, when Mateo last visited it in the Woodlawn. But Mateo is different. He is no longer afraid. He runs a hand over the gravestone, feeling roughness rut against the pads of his fingers.

Hello, my love, he says, resting his palm upon the monument.

Mateo allows himself, for a moment, to imagine a life in which he had made different choices—in which he had gone to live with Bonnie in the Tenderloin district and become Mateo Lopez, giving up his medical practice. Mateo imagines how things might have been if Santana had been born and raised in a small tenement flat to a father who was a shoe-shiner or a deliveryman or a hack driver and a mother who never had enough room in the kitchen and never learned to play the piano because their family couldn't afford to own one.

Mateo isn't foolish enough to suppose that such a life would have been easy or even good.

He isn't a Romantic anymore.

He can't be.

All he knows is that their little brown family might have been able to live if they had only stayed down where the world believes that they ought to have stayed and not aspired to or striven for or reached at or overstepped towards anything better that what they were allowed—if they had only acknowledged their constraints.

Maybe they could have been happy, even in poverty, even so hated.

At least they would have been together.

How Mateo aches for them to all be together.

Mateo will never know now how it would have been, of course, for his outcome is decided for him, and he has but three more days left upon this earth during which he may draw breath. The bottle of poison hidden in the pocket of his suit jacket weighs heavy, like an anchor, though it is small and inconspicuous.

His wife was buried under a false name, and soon he shall be, as well.

* * *

When Mateo arrives at the bachelor cottage for the evening, he hears voices coming from the side yard and soon discovers Puck and Santana on the garden terrace, Puck trimming flowers along a trellis and Santana sitting on a chair, her knees pulled up by her chest, listening as Puck prattles about more of his circus adventures.

—so I see the manacle start to break, and I try to call to St. James to tell him what's happening, but he can't hear me, on account of the parade. There's only a moment to spare, you know? So I run out there, grab the manacle, and hold it together with my bare hands—

So close to the tiger? Weren't you very afraid?

Well, the tiger had his back to me, and I figured that Jesse would keep him busy until the supes showed up—Oh, hey, Doc! How's it going?

Mateo steps onto the terrace, waving to Puck and stepping up beside Santana's chair. He sees that Santana wears Sweet Williams in her hair, the way she used to as a child. She notices Mateo noticing the flowers, and a knowing look passes between father and daughter, though Puck remains oblivious.

I was just telling the story of how I saved our lion-tamer from his own tiger, Puck brags, using his sheers to shape a nearby vine.

That sounds very brave of you, Mateo says, not disingenuously.

Puck shrugs. Just doing my job, sir, he says.

Or doing your lion-tamer's job, Santana suggests.

* * *

Mateo tries to memorize his time with Santana—her every little look and even the way she holds her fork and knife at supper. He asks Santana questions that he knows will require her to answer at length, inquiring concerning the plot points from her favorite novels, what ingredients she uses to produce her best meals, what she thinks about the headlines from this evening's newspaper. Eventually, Mateo asks Santana to play the piano for him, and when she asks what song, he says, Any song. All of them.

Santana is still sad, Mateo knows—he can see it at the corners of her eyes, right where she is most like Bonnie. Santana craves for Mateo's attention the way a small child craves sunlight during the darkest parts of winter. She is still tenuous, flighty, and not precisely as she was before. But she is also perfect, and Mateo loves her no less for her new differences.

If he could, he would wrap her heart in cotton to keep it safe from ever bruising.

Tonight, when Santana asks Mateo to stay, she does not do so due to worry for him, he doesn't suppose, but rather because she has so enjoyed this closeness to him, the way he has really been with her and not away somewhere, rapt in other thoughts.

If only she knew that she was and has always been his only thought.

I can't stay, sweeting, he says. Not tonight. I must be at my office so very early tomorrow. But thank you, my love, for hosting me so well. This evening has enchanted me. You promise me that you will sleep well tonight, please, and I shall see you tomorrow evening.

He only has two more days left to make such promises.

* * *

True to his word, Mateo must begin work at his office early the next day—though not before he administers to himself a first dosage of arsenic diluted in water, enough to put the stuff into his bloodstream and affect his decline, though not enough to make him terribly ill, for he needs to be able to work.

Today will be his last day as a doctor, treating patients.

He opens his door to anyone. He waives all fees. Tell your neighbors, he instructs all those patients who come to see him, that today Dr. Lucas will treat anyone for free. Tell them to come, and I will attend them.

Within an hour, he accumulates a sizeable crowd waiting in the front room of his office space. There are children and old people and persons of every background. If anyone complains about other waiting patients due to their sort, Mateo tells the person making the complaint that he must either abide the goings-on or leave without an examination. Most people choose to stay, and they come to him with all manner of afflictions, from ulcers to ingrown toenails to influenza to complications of pregnancy to broken bones.

Thank you, Doctor, so many patients tell him. No one else would see us.

Their saying so causes Mateo to feel some remorse, for he knows that once he is dead, there will be no one else to take his place, and these patients will suddenly have no physician. He does feel love for them in his heart—he always has—and he would not abandon them if it were not necessary that he do so for the sake of his only greater living love.

A little boy grabs onto the end of Mateo's stethoscope and whispers into the diaphragm on the chest piece. The boy is from the Tenderloin district. He lives not far from where Bonnie's family lives—or once lived at least.

Can you hear me? he asks.

I can, Mateo whispers back.

* * *

It is only after his lunch hour, when Mateo administers himself a second dosage of arsenic, that he begins to feel the ill effects of it, developing a sudden and persistent headache. His thoughts begin to muddle, and he finds it difficult to listen to his patients as they talk. Several persons ask him if he is all right, and he asserts that he is, though, in truth, he knows that he has just begun to die.

At present, Mateo's state is not so dire that he could not reverse it, if he chose to do so. But Mateo will not reverse it. Part of his intention in beginning his arsenic regimen early in the day was to determine what symptoms he would have so that he could master them before going home to Santana for supper later in the night.

In all honesty, Mateo has no interest in supper, for soon his stomach begins to churn. His body wants to expel the poison, but he prescribes himself an antiemetic in order to prevent it from doing so. It is imperative that he maintain a certain level of poison in his body if he is to die as scheduled. Mateo knows that he cannot risk falling so ill that someone will call an ambulance for him when he doesn't want it. He also knows that he cannot risk not poisoning himself enough, so that it might be possible for a physician to treat him, were he conveyed to a hospital. He must die slowly and at the correct hour, when he is alone. In-between patients, Mateo sits with his head hung between his knees, swallowing down his nausea.

Mateo's final patient is an elderly woman, a former slave from a Georgia plantation who has developed a swollen knee—prepatellar brusitis. When Mateo asks the woman for how long she has suffered from her condition, she says, Since before the war. Master's boy pushed me down some stairs, and I landed in a twist. Mateo aspirates the fluid from the knee using a syringe. The woman thanks Mateo, and Mateo thanks her, and suddenly Mateo is not a doctor anymore.

When he locks the door to his office for the night, he heaves a heavy sigh.

Whatever else anyone will say of him, he was excellent at his work.

It pains him to leave this life with so much of it left undone.

* * *

Mateo finds that walking to 5th Avenue to catch his streetcar exhausts him, and so he stops halfway there to hail a hack instead, directing the driver to Gramercy Park, please.

It dizzies him, riding elevated above the street, and he breathes heavily through his mouth, his belly hot beneath his clothing, his headache intensifying by degrees to changes in the light. When he arrives at the bachelor cottage, he must have the hack driver help him down to the street. The fellow supposes him inebriated, he feels sure, but he doesn't mind. It is not the hack driver he intends to impress tonight.

On his way up the walk, Mateo affords himself a stop at the gate, upon which he leans to catch his breath. It is the last day of May, and everything is sweet, colorful and pageant-pretty. Mateo waits until his respiration slows, until he can stand to his full height and carry himself unbent, watching birds squabble in the trees overhead and bees pollinate flowers in the garden. Mateo suddenly regrets very much that he must leave this world at a time when it is in full bloom.

It takes him another full minute to reach the door.

When he opens it, he feels weak.

Santana, my love! Mateo calls. Santana, I am home!

* * *

When Santana offers him dinner, Mateo tells her that he already ate at a luncheon at the Grolier Club and that he has not yet regained his appetite, so sumptuous was the meal. He waits in the parlor for Santana to finish eating without him, keeping his eyes closed and his head down, and then asks Santana, very meekly, if she might perhaps give him a haircut, if she would be so kind.

Before Santana was born and when she was an infant, Bonnie used to cut Mateo's hair. After Bonnie died, Alma assumed the job. Since Alma's death, Mateo has gone once to a barbershop. But now, at last, he will have Santana to assist him.

Mateo sits on a chair in the center of the kitchen, old newspaper pages fanned out underneath his feet and a bath towel draped about his shoulders. Mateo's suit jacket rests over the back of a chair at the small table, and Santana hovers over him, holding her grandmother's sharpest sewing sheers. She manipulates his neck, taking his head in her hand and tilting it in a certain way so that she can enjoy the best access by which to perform her task. Even with Mateo seated, Santana has to stand on a little footstool in order to overhang his head. She breathes heavily.

All right, she says, nervous that she will do wrong.

When Santana makes a first successful cut, Mateo feels her relaxes somewhat, and he relaxes with her. He closes his eyes, swallowing down his nausea, attempting to immerse himself in this moment as a last instance of closeness to his daughter. Santana makes another cut, and Mateo feels a flurry of hair tickle at his ear as it descends from his head.

But then.

An errant snip.

A small pain and Mateo flinches.

Santana gasps and steps down from her stool at once, her motions quick and panicked. Oh God, did I hurt you? she asks, stricken, her distress disproportionate to whatever damage she has caused.

Even without seeing, Mateo knows that Santana has nicked his ear. He also knows it is no great matter that she has done so. Whatever wound she has inflicted is most minimal. Mateo touches his hand to the place and feels the only slightest wetness. Santana sees the hint of blood and blanches.

Oh, Papa, I cut your ear with the sheers! I'm so sorry!

Her voice turns higher and almost hysterical.

Mateo stands to calm her. Santana, my angel, he says, don't cry. It's only a little cut. He wipes his fingers at the spot, cleaning the blood. You see? It washes right away.

But I hurt you, didn't I? Santana asserts, blaming herself for that which is no matter.

If she were not genuinely upset, her concern would almost be precious. She is, as always, unfailingly earnest and sweet-hearted. Mateo assures her, It's all right, Santana. I'm all right. You didn't hurt me. I'm fine.

He smiles to prove his wellness, though he feels dizzy for having stood up so quickly, and reaches for Santana with his clean hand, taking her by the wrist. His poor little girl is always so quick to feel guilt, even for the smallest accidents. His heart seams stretch for her.

It is only the sheers, he explains. They are made for right-handed persons, like myself and your grandmother, so they are difficult for you, as a left-handed person, to use. Never mind it, peach. If you don't wish to continue, I can always stop by a barbershop sometime later in the week. You needn't fret.

All right, Santana agrees, allowing Mateo's insistence to calm her. She relaxes against his touch, handing the sheers over to him as though she were again a little child surrendering some dangerous object that she ought not to play with over to the person who could keep her safe from it. There is no guile in her, and she is truly penitent, though she has no reason to be.

Thank you, she says quietly.

Thank you, Mateo says, grateful for her attempt to cut his hair, though she most certainly is not.

In the next moment, Mateo offers to clean up the newspapers and put away the towel, and so Santana leaves him alone in the kitchen, glad to be clear of the place following her accident. When she is gone, Mateo leans against the counter, catching his breath, swallowing down his sickness. He feels bile in his throat, dizziness, and also a contradictory swell of overwhelming love.

Without meaning to do so, he wonders who will calm Santana's little day-to-day upsets once he has gone. He hopes that someone will appear to take his place in this duty and that whoever it is will be gentle and kind, as Santana is always deserving of it.

Though Mateo told Santana that he would seek out some other barber to finish the task she began, he will not do so, for he will be dead before it matters. His mother would fuss at the idea of him going to his grave with long hair, but he doesn't mind.

It isn't important anyhow.

* * *

That night, when Santana begs Mateo to remain at the bachelor cottage, she does so in an attitude of contrition—because she still feels guilty for cutting his ear and because she wants to make it up to him by showering him with care. She promises him turned-down sheets and breakfast in the morning, if he stays.

I cannot, my love, he says, truly regretting that he must go, for I have business to which to attend.

If you must go, Papa.

I must.

He kisses her brow before he leaves, as he did her head on the front stoop before. She remains still as he presses his lips to her—warm and still and never wanting him to go, though he must. She whispers goodbye to him in her smallest, little voice.

He says, I love you, sweeting. I shall see you tomorrow.

It is the last time.

What Santana does not know is that Mateo cannot stay at the house because staying would reveal his unwellness to her. Even on the hack ride back to his apartment, Mateo trembles and almost convulses. Once he reaches his own place, he can scarcely step over the threshold and close the door behind him before he retches on the floor. Rather than gentling his stomach with something bland and easy, he imbibes more arsenic and throws himself onto his bed. Fever sweats grip him, and his insides cramp and knot.

Somewhere nearby, Stewart sleeps easily, healthful and imagining that he is on the verge of victory. But Mateo was always cleverer than Stewart and more stubborn than him, as well. Mateo will outdo Stewart in the end, even from the grave. He almost wishes that there were such a place as Hell so that he might meet Stewart there someday.

In the ensuing hours, Mateo administers himself multiple antiemetics but still vomits thrice. His left-hand develops an almost constant tremor. Though he occasionally falls into hot, grotesque dreaming, he inevitably awakens to bouts of infirmity. He tries to maintain his hydration and reminds himself again and again of his sweet girl at the cottage, the reason why he must continue on this dreadful course.

* * *

In the morning, Mateo bathes himself to cool his skin and rid himself of the stink of sick. Striations stripe his fingernails, and a dark spot like a bruise decorates his abdomen. He forces himself to dress. He dons cologne. He combs his too-long hair and drinks another arsenic draught. The tremor in his hand persists.

But he must report to the hospital to deliver his final lecture as a professor.

Before today, Mateo had never thought about it, but the medical students in this year's class are not so much older than Santana. They are boys. Some of them still needn't shave every day. Some of them still wear straw boaters when they visit their gentleman's clubs on the weekend. They are competitive with each other and competitive about life. Though they profess to know their own unknowingness, they still overestimate themselves. Some of them will be good doctors, while others will amount to nothing or even worse. Today, they have studied concerning how to treat a chancroid. They expect for Mateo to quiz them concerning the treatment, but he does not.

Rather than taking a place at the lectern, he sits down upon his desktop, facing the students in their seats. He is too sick to stand but not too sick to speak.

Tell me, he says. What is it that we vow under Hippocrates?

The students gape at him from their places, boggled.

To do no harm? one ventures.

To worship Apollo? one jokes.

Mateo shakes his head, waits for silence to retake the room. Once he has it, he scans the faces before him, meeting their eyes, until he has seen every one. It is simply this, he says. That whatever houses we may visit, we will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice. Go to every house, gentleman. To every house, regardless. You are dismissed.

* * *

When Mateo quits the hospital for the final time, he feels no shame in going, for he has served his duties well and even accomplished good in his position from time to time. His training went to judicious use, and he must admit within himself that he is glad to have made medicine his profession. Though Mateo often complained of his parents for the ambitions for him, he does not regret becoming a surgeon or dedicating himself to the Bellevue in the least, except for that doing so sometimes kept him away from Santana.

Perhaps the coroners will return Mateo's body to the hospital for an autopsy tomorrow, but if they do so, they will discover nothing from it and will come to believe that he died of something unexpected, such as a disruption of the heart or a blood clot in the brain.

Though tests exist for the detection of arsenic poisoning in a body, no one will think to use them on Mateo. He is a young and seemingly healthy man of forty-six years in age, and, except for Stewart who knows better, no one would believe that he has any enemies. His death will prove the queerest and most unexpected mystery to everyone.

They will bury him without knowing that he is a suicide, and it will be for the best.

Driving along the hack route from the Bellevue to the bachelor cottage, Mateo thinks to himself that, in some inexplicable way, he is glad that he will die in the city. Save for some college excursions to Upstate and Niagara to view the falls, Mateo has experienced his whole life in the boroughs, so it is only appropriate that he will experience his death in them, too.

He can feel it now—his body and mind failing him. The sickness runs deep within his systems. At this late date, he does not suppose that he could repair the damage from the poison even if he desired to. Death awaits him, and he must go. There is no other destination on this course.

And so Mateo must have his hack driver help him down to the street again, and so Mateo must wait at the gatepost once more to recuperate himself enough to venture to the front stoop of the house.

It is the first day of June, and summer has come to New York City. The day heat seeps into Mateo's skin, radiating from the pavement and the metal moldings of the fence. The bachelor cottage looks old and comfortable against bold Gramercy greenery. Puck really has done a fine job with the garden. Everything is like a postcard.

What a shame that Mateo must leave behind such a beautiful home.

* * *

Mateo makes his best attempts to conceal the symptoms of his illness from Santana. He buries his tremulous hand deep in his pocket, and, whenever Santana turns away from him, he wipes his brow with his handkerchief, ridding his flesh of cold sweat. Sitting on the sofa couch so as to mask his weakness, he attempts to remain still, to reserve his strength.

For a few hours now, he must not be dying.

For both his sake and Santana's, he must pass this night as though all were well.

It has always been the case that where it involves his daughter, Mateo has infinite interest and attention to spare for her, though perhaps seldom the time. Tonight, he faces the opposite dilemma, for though he has time enough in which to do it, Mateo can scarcely observe Santana at all, let alone do so well, for, in his illness, his mind melts down to tar, and his heart palpitates, avid, beneath his breastbone.

Would you like some supper? Santana asks him. I could prepare some broth for you.

No, thank you, love, he manages. They're still overfeeding me at the club.

Some tea, maybe? Santana suggests.

She wears Bonnie's worry around her eyes, a little pout at her mouth.

She is very still, as if she believes that Mateo needs her to be so.

Perhaps he does.

Some tea, he agrees more for her sake than his own, and, when she stands, he watches her go, his heart seams snagging on her, following her away, even for these few short moments.

Though Mateo recognizes the severity of his own condition, he still cannot help but feel that he is squandering something invaluable—his last night with Santana, his last night alive on earth. Mateo wants so much for every moment to brim with meaning, but how can he create such an effect when he cannot admit what is happening to him aloud?

If he could, Mateo would tell Santana truths and present to her last lessons. He would speak to her concerning Bonnie and tell her stories about yesterdays that she does not remember for herself. Most of all, he would explain to her so that she would not misunderstand at all to what infinite degree he loves her. He would confess to Santana that he does not wish to leave—that he would stay with her happily forever, if only the world would allow it. If only Mateo could apologize to Santana for what is about to happen in her life and reveal to her his purpose, tonight would be such a different night!

But Santana must not know.

She must remain innocent to Mateo's designs.

When Santana returns to Mateo with tea, she sets it on the table before him, clinking the bone china saucer against the bone china teacup. In the next instant, she starts to go away again, perhaps supposing that Mateo does not wish for her company or frightened by his strange demeanor. But Mateo cannot bear for Santana to forsake him now. He must hear and see her as much as he can.

Summer peach! Mateo calls out. Won't you come back here and—and read to me?

Santana looks over her shoulder, frowning because she doesn't understand what her papa means. From your newspaper? she asks, incredulous.

From one of your books, please. Whatever one is handy.

For a long moment, Santana stares at Mateo, puzzling out his request. She perceives that there is something ill-at-ease with him, but she cannot name it. She lacks too much information, and her intuition extends only so far. It bothers her that she does not know, Mateo can tell, but however disconcerted she may be, she can never deny Mateo anything when he asks her for it in earnest.

I have Sara Crewe, she says in a little voice.

That sounds perfect, sweeting, Mateo commends, nodding for her to fetch it.

Mateo expects Santana to scurry upstairs to procure the book and braces himself for her to abandon him for the moment, but she does not do as he expects. Instead, she pads over to the bay window and lifts a particular throw pillow, producing the book from beneath it, as if both she and the book had been waiting for this moment, for Mateo to require their company.

It is now late evening, and fractal twilight bursts against every glass and lacquered surface in the parlor, jumping from white piano keys, careening from the vases which decorate the mantle. It casts Santana's shadow long across the Oriental rug and catches in her dark hair, which tonight she wears down, wavy against her neck. Santana bites her lips, shy, taking up the book, showing the book to Mateo, as if to say, Oh here it is.

Through Mateo only gifted Sara Crewe to Santana just two and a half months ago, it already bears the imprints of her love—not any great damage but a broken-in spine and pages which present themselves immediately when the book falls open, knowing from past experience that someone will want to see them. Santana handles the book carefully, as she handles all her precious things carefully, carrying it with two hands though one hand would suffice.

Mateo hadn't known that Santana had resumed her reading regimen since Alma's death. Thinking on it now, Mateo supposes that Santana could no more give up reading than he could give up his love for her. Santana starts to take the book toward the piano bench so that she might sit adjacent to Mateo to read it, but Mateo halts her with another request.

Please, won't you sit with me? he asks, patting the sofa cushion beside him.

Santana nods. Of course, she says.

For an instant, Mateo hopes that Santana will sit nestled beside him, as she used to do during her childhood days—her little shoulder fitted at his underarm and her hip pressed to his like a kiss—but of course she seats herself at a polite distance from Mateo, arranging herself at the opposite end of the sofa couch from him, still close but also impossibly faraway.

Sara Crewe, or What Happened at Miss Minchin's, by Frances Hodgson Burnett, she reads, crossing one leg over the other and settling in to her space.

Just then, pain torques in Mateo's belly, and he swallows down a sudden gush of sickness. His face heats, and he must look away from Santana so that she does not perceive his immense discomfort. Now he can only hear her voice and see her faintest reflection silhouetted on the glass in the bay window. He tries to sink into the sea of her words, to swim in it and forget, for the moment, that he is drowning. But the light shifts outside, and then even Santana's reflection disappears from the glass, blotted out by a fierce shaft of setting sun. He cannot see her anymore. Her voice is all to him.

It is a grace that Santana has a beautiful reading voice, like honey and wine flavoring words from the page. She renders the story with great precision, never faltering with the phrases, and is ineffably pleasant to listen to. Were Mateo more at peace within himself, he could easily allow her to lull him to sleep with her words. As it is, he simply listens, steeping in her pauses and breaths, her nouns and verbs, the way she renders something she knows so thoroughly to life.

So steady is Santana's pacing that Mateo wonders if she doesn't have the entirety of the text memorized by now—if she isn't actually reading at all. Something squeezes tight Mateo's chest, and Santana recites from the page:

... but the fact was that he was a rash, innocent young man, and very sad at the thought of parting with his little girl, who was all he had left to remind him of her beautiful mother, whom he had dearly loved. And he wished her to have everything the most fortunate little girl could have; and so, when the polite saleswomen in the shops said, Here is our very latest thing in hats, the plumes are exactly the same as those we sold to Lady Diana Sinclair yesterday, he immediately bought what was offered to him, and paid whatever was asked.

* * *

As Santana persists to read, Mateo's illness worsens, until suddenly he must excuse himself at once to the water closet. He manages to run upstairs before he spills his stomach contents into the sink. Bile burns his throat, and his eyes sear with reactive tears. His stomach gives a strange warble, emptied but still petulant. He breathes heavily, like a storm, and spits the vile taste from his mouth.

Without waiting until he has even fully recovered, Mateo washes the mess, his hands, his face, even slicking water through his hair with his fingers. The mirror shows him haggard, a stranger to himself, dark discoloration circling his eyes, an unnatural gauntness to his face.

He looks like a dying man.

Or a dead man, even.

For the first time, he feels afraid, for though he has often attended to dying persons, he had never imagined dying himself one day, at least not in any real detail. He already feels sicker than he has ever before in his life. How much worse will it be from here?

Though he would linger in the water closet to recuperate his breath and strength, he cannot do so. He mustn't delay in returning to Santana or else she will fear for him.

In desperation, he crosses the hallway into Alma's old bedroom and ransacks the vanity, fumbling until he uncovers an old tin of his mother's old rouge powder. With trembling fingers, he plies the makeup to his cheeks, desperate to give himself some color. After he has painted himself, he clings to the back of his mother's chair for a moment, fingers curled over the wood, his fingertips stained red. His whole arm tremors now, and when he blinks, he sees starburst lights, even against the dim.

Leaving the bedroom, he must hang on the banister descending the stairs, his knees wobbly beneath him, and fight to keep his breathing even as he presents himself to Santana. By now, the sun has set, and everything outside the bay window sleeps beneath a blanket of violet night.

Where were we, precious girl? he asks, putting on his most winning smile for Santana. He hides his trembling hand in his pocket and battles to keep the accompanying arm still within his jacket sleeve. Weren't we just at the part where Miss Minchin lived in London?

Papa, Santana says in her very serious way, that's the very first sentence of the story. We read that almost an hour ago.

Oh? Forgive me, my angel, he teases. Yes, I remember now. We were at the part where the young army captain sends his little daughter to attend Miss Minchin's Select Seminary, no?

Santana shakes her head, for Mateo is hopeless to her. That's only the next paragraph, Papa, she says. Do you really want me to start the whole story over at this late hour?

If it would mean I could listen to you read it all over again, then of course, Mateo says.

But, for his word, something jackknifes in his gut—a pain of a severing sort, of which Mateo has never felt the likes before. The sensation is excruciating, and Mateo only barely suppresses a cry when he feels it. He wills himself to keep his smile in place. He wills himself to sound jolly.

—but I am afraid I must excuse myself for the night. I have a lecture for which to prepare tomorrow, you see—

Another severing pain.

Oh, but Papa! Santana says, folding the book closed over her thumb on the page and standing up at once from the sofa couch. We haven't finished the story yet. Won't you please stay at least until the Indian Gentleman reveals himself to Sara as her father's old friend?

She makes her imploration in the most unobtrusive way possible, with a meek expression and a small voice. It is clear that she expects Mateo to deny her what she has asked of him—that he has denied her so many times before that she daren't hope for anything else now.

Though Mateo had managed to forget—or at least to pretend to forget—for these last few days how sad Santana has seemed as of late, now he cannot either forget or pretend any such things anymore, for Santana's sadness is most plain to him, manifest at the corners of her mouth, in the particular darkness of her eyes, in the way she won't entirely raise her head to look up, in the worrying of her thumb over the cover of the book in her hand, fretting at the gilded title.

She is suddenly nine years old again and lonely because her papa has just accepted a promotion to lecturer at the medical college and works long hours every night.

She wants only what she has always wanted.

What Mateo has never been able to give her.

For her entreaty, Mateo's heart seams slip from their places, unravel and coil into a heap beneath his heart. The sawdust in his heart spills out until his heart itself is empty. There is nothing left in him except for the one last lie that he knows that he must tell.

You could stay, Santana peeps.

No, peach, Mateo whispers, voice dying in his throat. Not tonight. You'll do very well without me. I must away. I will—I will see you tomorrow.

* * *

He cannot kiss her goodbye because he does not trust himself to approach her without being ill or revealing his tremors. He cannot embrace her for the same reason. He also cannot stay for another minute or else he will never go. He will die here before her, and that he must not do.

He cannot.

He dons his black Brogans without lacing them and gathers up his surgeon's bag in both arms because he can no longer support its weight with only one. His last look at his daughter comes through the bay window.

She sits with her knees hugged tight to her chest, her book dangling from her hand, her head rested on her arms. The electric lights from the parlor paint her soft and small. Her folded arms form a blockade, hiding the expression of her mouth, but her eyes are plainly visible as she watches him disappear down the walk into the night.

Though he has only just left, she already waits for him to return to their home.

* * *

Mateo makes it past the gate and around the fence before he stumbles. He only avoids a fall by snatching for the fence and catching an iron bar, which scrapes against his palm until he bleeds thin, poisoned blood which barely clots. His knees stop just short from biting pavement. He has never been so weak.

Clinging to the fence for his support, Mateo falters down the street until he reaches East 20th. His necktie chokes him, so he rips it away from his neck and undoes the first button at his collar. He must stop and start no fewer than ten times before he arrives at Park Avenue, only one city block away.

Though usually a veritable cavalcade of hacks waits at this particular corner, tonight there are none in view. Mateo hunkers where he stands, clutching a street sign for balance, and holds his breath for either death or a driver, whosoever will come for him first.

Eventually, a stagecoach appears, and Mateo hails it.

Are you unwell, sir? the young, fresh-faced driver asks, helping Mateo to step up into the cabin.

Mateo responds with the address to his apartment but does not answer the question otherwise, mostly because he cannot. He spends the ride across town to Lexington Plaza in a delirium, fevered and thinking of Santana and how she must fear for him, for his dark strangeness tonight.

It is for her that Mateo rustles into his pocket and for her that Mateo produces the green glass bottle from his pocket's depths. He struggles to pop the bottle's stopper, only succeeding after several attempts. He then draws the bottle to his lips, breathes in and out, and drinks. Some liquid escapes onto his lips, but he licks it up with his tongue. Upon emptying the bottle, he tosses it under his seat. By the time the driver discovers the discarded thing either tomorrow or the next day, Mateo will already be dead, and the driver will have had other passengers in his cabin by then. He will not know from whence the bottle came. He will not guess its purpose.

When the stagecoach arrives outside his building, Mateo attempts to stand inside the cabin but feels a rush of downing white crash over him like a wave. His strength ebbs, and he swoons back to his seat. The driver opens the cabin door.

Sir? Shall I take you to the hospital? You seem very unwell, indeed. The Bellevue is only right down the—

Just help me to the door, please.

Yes, sir. Of course, sir.

The driver all but carries Mateo to the door, Mateo's arm slung over his shoulder, Mateo's feet doing no work to help their progress forward. Mateo tips the driver generously—proffering him all the change that he has left in his wallet—both because Mateo no longer has need for dollar bills and because Mateo has lost his finer dexterity and cannot separate one bill from another anymore.

Are you sure you can manage from here, sir?

Yes, thank you. You—you may return to your coach.

No, sir. I think I ought to go with you. I can leave my coach for a moment. Just let me help you, sir.

Th-thank you.

The driver drags Mateo up the stairs to the designated flat as if Mateo were an anchor and he a sailor raising it from depths to deck. He bears Mateo's whole weight while Mateo fumbles for his keys. When the door to Mateo's flat opens, the driver ferries Mateo over the threshold and then pilots him to his chair, dropping Mateo down with a grunt. The driver switches on the electric lights in the parlor room and retrieves Mateo's bag from where they had left it behind them in the hallway, setting it at Mateo's feet.

For their efforts, both men sweat and pant. The driver doffs his hat and wipes his brow with it.

Sir, he says, I believe you're very unwell. If you won't have me send for a doctor, at least say that I can pray the Lord's Prayer for you tonight.

His eyes are bright with worry, and he crumples his hat in his hands, wringing it as though it were wet. How he is so very young. He will be the last person to ever see Mateo alive, Mateo knows. It is perhaps for this reason that Mateo offers him the weakest nod.

Prayer can save no one, but it also cannot harm Mateo now.

Let the boy say what he will.

Goodnight, sir. Be well, sir.

And Mateo is alone.

* * *

After a long while, Mateo leans forward, flopping his hand onto his surgeon's bag. After an even longer while, he manages to pull his surgeon's bag toward him across the floor. The bag weighs like lead, and Mateo can scarcely work its latch, being so clumsy and impossibly weak.

Only on a third attempt does he open the thing.

From its belly, he produces a particular item: a small silver clutch, which he tucks into the pocket of his waistcoat.

With great effort, Mateo heaves himself from the chair, clattering onto the ground in a heap. It is a grace that he has no neighbor in the flats directly above and below his own, for if he did, someone would hear the ruckus and come to investigate the matter. Mateo lies on the floorboards, wheezing, a pain in his wrist from the impact, a pulse in his knees where they caught his weight. His face rests against floorboards, and he wonders if it won't remain there until he dies.

But it cannot—he cannot.

He forces himself to untangle his limbs and ignore his hurt. On fours, he crawls from his chair to his bedroom, like a little child or an animal, out of the light and into the darkness. Twice, his left arm gives out from underneath him, and, twice, he falls onto his face, his chin colliding with carpet. He bites his tongue and tastes the ferruginous sweet of blood flood his mouth. He drags himself upon his elbows.

When he reaches his bedroom, he makes it to the bed and then weeps, for he does not know how he will raise himself up onto it. For a long while, he remains on the floor, leaned against his mattress, dying, his shoulders wracking with dry tears. If he could only have someone to help him—but the only person left living who has both known him and loved him is across town nestled in her own bed, and she must never know of his last troubles.

Mateo kicks against the floor, stumping his shoes from his feet. It takes him minutes to remove the first and minutes more to remove the second. He cannot reach down to peel off his socks. He cannot undress himself. His heartbeat runs at such a pace that he could not count it even if he had his perfect faculties about him. Something trips Mateo's gag reflex, and he spits the blood from his bitten tongue onto his chin.

When he does not report to the hospital either tomorrow or the next day for his shifts, his colleagues will send someone to find him, or else when he does not arrive for supper at the bachelor cottage, Santana will dispatch Puck in order to ascertain what has caused him to delay. In either case, someone will discover his body. They will know that he is dead.

He breathes and breathes and breathes and throws his arm between two bars at the frame at the foot of his bed. They must find him as if he had died suddenly in his sleep. It is imperative that Santana hear the story told that way. And so he wrenches, using pure friction to raise himself, his socked feet scrambling against the floor, his shoulder straining in the opposite direction of its joint and flesh pinched between rods of brass, until finally he elevates his body high enough that he can cast himself onto the mattress, like a wave crashing onto shore.

For a long while, Mateo cannot move. White blankets his vision, and even once it recedes, everything appears dim around him. The room is dark anyhow. There are no electric lights. Mateo lies with his arm crushed beneath his body, his feet still rested on the floor.

For Santana, he tells himself, curling his fists into his quilt and sheets, holding to them with all his strength, heaving his body further onto the bed and then fighting to raise his leg high enough that he can move it onto the mattress.

Mateo does not believe in miracles, but it is a miracle when first his right leg and then his left follow him into bed. He uses the last of his remaining strength to roll himself onto his back. His shirt and waistcoat and suit jacket are all soaked through in sweat, as if he had been submersed in the ocean.

Maybe he really will drown.

With trembling hand, Mateo produces the silver clutch, hot from fever heat, from his waistcoat pocket, and unlatches the small catch. Clumsily, he places the photograph onto his nightstand. He cannot see Bonnie's face, either because it is dark or because he is blind, but he wants her to oversee what he has tried to do for their daughter. He wants her to be with him while he is in his bed this one last time.

It strikes Mateo now that he has never had a photograph made of Santana, and, though it will make no difference to him once he is gone, he does regret having no record of her captured anywhere, except for in his heart and mind. Somehow, Mateo has been a bad father to Santana without meaning to be. He had wanted so many good things for her but failed to secure them on every account.

It is too late now for Mateo to undo whatever harm he has caused, but perhaps someday someone will help to undo the harm after he is gone. Maybe in the coming years, someone will keep photographs of Santana at a bedside. Maybe someone will know of her. Will know her. Cherish her. Cause her to smile without also causing her to cry.

Mateo's breathing slows, turns harder to come by. He feels his pulse slowing, his thoughts ending, everything in him darkening, like the city settling into night. As Mateo has thought before, it is not so difficult to die for a person as it is to live for her. In everywhere that he has gone and in all he has done, Mateo has never experienced any greater love than that he feels for his little girl.

* * *

**Spanish translations:**

_**¡No me toques! : Don't touch me!**_

_**maldita : damned girl**_

_**malagüera : a folk-term meaning "evil omen"**_

_**Buenos días : Good morning**_

_**¿Dónde estás? : Where are you?**_

* * *

_**Stay tuned for an epilogue...**_


	5. Epilogue: Baby Girl

**Epilogue: Baby Girl**

Brittany don't get on with the Berry girl, and nowadays it ain't proper for her to spend even half as much time with the Evans boy as she might like. For as much as Daniel regrets to admit it, Brittany has passed the last few years lonely ever since her mama died—and maybe that's why Daniel abides it when Brittany takes a shine to Noah Puckerman's little mulatta wife.

Sunlight has barely begun to creep beneath the eastern wall of the tent, glinting like polished coin-metal low along the grass. Daniel sits at the edge of his cot and sips his coffee, spider-pain clenching the crown of his skull. Across the way, Brittany sits on her cot and runs her fingers again and again through her hair, sifting gold, combing out the tresses. She speaks in her usual aimless way, though quietly in respect to Daniel's brewing headache.

Daniel fixates upon the shell of her ear, still tellingly pinked, though no longer swollen. He can't look away from it.

—and she remembered it all, Brittany says, even though she hadn't read it for a long, long time and even though she said it wasn't her favorite. She has this little way of remembering things so you can tell she pays attention to them the first time they come around.

The truth is that Daniel broke Brittany, not in a shatter but in such a manner that she carries her best parts around with her, busted, like a bird with fractured wings.

The childlike wonderment and purity which make Brittany Daniel's precious treasure and greatest solace also leave her vulnerable, disposing her to accept without complaint those things to which she should by all accounts object and to seek in all the wrong places for those necessities she lacks.

Daniel wishes he could point to when precisely he dealt Brittany this damage, this breaking blow—perhaps in the year when her mama died or on the day when she first stood before the board—but he can't.

He only knows that he loves to see her so lively again even as much as he hates to know what she's so lively about.

Ever since the little mulatta turned up at camp not a week ago, Brittany has been nigh inseparable from her, running off at all hours of the day to spend time in the girl's company and jawing on about her whenever they must part from each other, even for just a few hours.

Of course, Brittany has always had a way of hanging her heart on things that will eventually disappoint her.

If Brittany were still a child, her liking for the little mulatta would be amusing—the sweet misunderstanding of an innocent girl—but now that Brittany is grown, it is at best an embarrassment and at worst a mistake. For one thing, it ain't right for Brittany to take the little mulatta away from Puckerman as often as she does. For another thing, it is dangerous for Brittany to ignore difference as if it don't exist.

Brittany wears a placid look, staring down at the bottom hem of the tent, though Daniel doesn't suppose that she really sees the hem at all. She seems wandered away into something, though she remains upon the cot. The queerest smile quirks the corners of her mouth, small and soft but warm in a way that spreads like the morning. She gives her hair another stroke before lying back, allowing it to spill over the edge of the cot and skirt the green blades carpeting the earth as would rays of sun.

That's why you've got to only do the kinds of things that are worth remembering around her, she goes on, —good things, things that are worth smiling about. Sometimes, she smiles like she only just remembered how to do it.

Brittany draws a sharp breath and suddenly looks up at Daniel, clarity in her eyes. Given her current discourse, the clarity frightens Daniel, who fears, perhaps, at last, not only an accusation from her but the knowledge that she would be justified to make such an accusation. He winces, holds his breath.

Hey, she says, oblivious, did you know her daddy was a surgeon? He worked with knives, just like you, and they lived in New York City. Have you ever been to New York City, Daddy?

The fright empties from Daniel's chest, and he breathes but cannot speak. His mouth feels slow today and his jaw thick. His tongue is cotton. He gives one shake of his head, taking another sip from his coffee, settling into the surety that Brittany won't accuse him after all—that most likely she would never. What he can't manage to say is that their circus ain't big enough for New York City and never has been, not even before Adams took over. Sometimes they go Upstate, but they surely don't play Madison Square Garden, not like Barnum & Bailey do.

Brittany doesn't seem to mind Daniel's answer or the lack of it—she's still wandered off to wherever she is. She shakes her head, sweeping her hair against the grass. Even in the dimness, she is sunshine, somehow. Of a sudden, she stands up off the cot, adjusting her skirt, fidgeting with the fabric as if it has to lie just right, in some certain, perfect way. She tucks her hair over her ear, shrouding it.

I'm gonna go see her, she says, —see if she wants some breakfast. You can just go back to sleep, Daddy. It'll make your head feel better.

Brittany seems to have set herself to the task, so Daniel don't quarrel with her concerning it. Brittany is so often like her mama, composed to do what she will no matter what anyone judges of her actions.

Daniel watches Brittany gather herself and start to leave the tent. She walks almost on tiptoe, so light over the grass. When she peels back the tent flaps to slip outside, a shaft of dawn sunders the room like a knife blade cutting the air. Daniel attempts to warn Brittany to mind herself, but the words thicken in his mouth, difficult to come by.

He grunts, Baby girl, able to say no more or less.

Brittany waves goodbye to him, pleasant, shifting into his blind-spot. She disappears into his blur and then through the tent flaps. It's hard to say whether she moves like the light or the light moves like her, traipsing over everything.

This last week, Daniel's hardly recognized her, all the easiness in her ways.

Daniel wishes that he could enjoy some easiness for himself. His muscles harden like stone today, so it's just as well that the circus won't have no show. Pain flares around the orbits of his eyes, at the top of his neck, in his jaw, and he grimaces, wondering how long it will be before he can't follow after Brittany, even if he so desires.

These days, Daniel hasn't much choice but to keep on. He has to keep on for Brittany. She ain't ready for things without him. Easy it sure ain't, but it's easier than some things. Part of Daniel wants to keep Brittany with him in their tent, but part of him supposes that she ought to be able to wander off when she will, that there's something for her outside different than what's in.

* * *

Daniel sleeps through the morning without dreaming, waking not long before noon, stirred by some insufferable tic of the brain. He follows his blind-spot, tracing shapes on the walls, casting his gaze here and there, putting dim holes through solid objects. Brittany hasn't returned to the tent since the morning, and Daniel don't suppose that she will return to the tent at any time soon.

When one of the kitchen girls delivers Daniel his lunch, he can't force himself to eat it because his stomach is perhaps even thicker than his jaws. He sends the girl away forthwith, unable to provide her with either an explanation of his poor appetite or apologies for her kitchen matron. He clenches his face in his hands and washes his mouth thrice with water from his toilette set. Something in the air don't sit well with his constitution.

When a sunshower breaks over the circus just minutes later, he knows why.

Rain falls softly at first, like a vague and nervous habit, and then harder, like the percussion of a timpani drum. As clouds move in, blanketing the sky above the circus, shade pervades inside the tent, and the day cools. The change in barometric pressure puts an awful pain in Daniel's bones, and he lies down upon his cot, needled and immobile.

It ain't long before Tanaka comes calling.

Pierce? You in there? Tanaka gruffs, rapping through the canvas on the center pole of the tent. Is Miss Pierce in there with you?

Of course, Daniel can't manage to work his mouth, can't manage to lift himself from his cot. He lies heavy in the sling of it, silent and motionless. Only after a long while does he slug his legs onto the grass and eventually straighten himself into a sitting position. He attempts to open his jaws and does, but then his tongue refuses to cooperate.

Pierce? Pierce! You in there? Where's Brittany?

If Daniel could speak, he would say that he don't know where Brittany is—though he would suggest Tanaka check with Puckerman's little mulatta wife for a start. But since Daniel can't speak, he don't say anything. He sits upright upon his cot, hands curled over the edge, spine rigid, mouth hung open but too numb to work. He plumbs his throat for his voice but produces only a dry gasp, too quiet for Tanaka to even hear it through the tent flaps.

Damn it, Pierce! Tanaka curses, slapping the center pole.

He blusters away without ever seeing Daniel.

Five minutes later, Daniel croaks, I'm here. She ain't.

His voice sounds like it crawled free from a crypt.

Soon enough, Daniel hears a chorus of shouts sounding through the camp, a cacophony punctuated by bursts of thunder. The shouts bear Brittany's name and the little mulatta's name, together. Daniel knows then that Brittany has shirked some duty, drifting away as she is wont to do.

He feels ashamed for more reasons than one.

* * *

Brittany doesn't return to the tent until long after the cessation of the rains and the fall of dark. She slips through the tent flaps, supposing Daniel already asleep, and breathes as if she had just slowed from a sprint.

For the briefest instant, moonlight silhouettes Brittany through the part between the tent flaps, and Daniel watches her draw both hands to her mouth, pressing them to her face as if to stifle either laughter or a cry. Brittany closes her eyes tightly, inhales against her palms. The inhalation sounds like a wish, a wanting, and Daniel wonders what secret she has breathed into her lungs. Clouds must shift to block the moon just then because, suddenly, blackness blots Brittany from view. She closes the tent flaps fully behind her and traipses over to her cot.

Daniel supposes that he ought to say something, but his jaw is too thick, and he ain't sure what he just saw anyhow.

* * *

The next morning, Brittany makes her exit from the tent before the first light of morning breaks upon the horizon. Before she goes, she crouches at the edge of Daniel's cot to wish him farewell. Her breath heats his skin, and she leans to press a light kiss to the stubble on his cheek, whispering, I think I'll ride with her on the train today. I'll see you later, Daddy.

Daniel pretends to sleep and so doesn't make a reply.

There were so many mistakes his old man made with him that he promised he wouldn't never repeat with his little baby girl but has. Ignoring her when she wants for him is one. Begrudging her time spent pursuing her fancy is another. He remembers holding her on the day when she was born, how she could almost fit in just one of his hands, how she was so red and precious and fragile. He never had any delusions that the circus life would be easiest or best for her, but he had somehow hoped it might prove pleasanter than it has been—that she wouldn't have to go seeking graces from strangers when she should have those graces available to her at home.

Pain lodges in Daniel's face and gullet and slithers down, suffusing his ribs and settling in his belly. He knows only part of the pain comes from his disease. The rest is guilt, raw and persistent.

For so many years, Daniel kept Brittany at heel without any reason to do so beyond his own selfishness. Now suddenly he has the reasons to keep her but no longer the will. As it is, he can't even say a word.

* * *

Daniel thinks for a long, long while about Brittany and about her mama and life and things he ought to have told Brittany years ago. When he rises, his muscles ache as if wounded. He starts to dismantle his tent in preparation for transit to the next stop, but his hands are always clumsy in the mornings, and he can't seem to pull apart the top beam of the frame from its poles. He grips the timber, his fingers curled into a useless claw.

From across the way, Evans hails, You need help, neighbor?

Daniel can't reply with more than a nod, but Evans comes along anyhow.

Evans didn't grow up at the circus, but he is perhaps the closest thing Daniel has had to a longtime acquaintance. Daniel never did know how Evans got from a Methodist seminary to the circus except to hear that it had something to do with a famous clown by the name of Rice. In any case, he appreciates how reverent Evans is and how private—and these last few years perhaps more than ever.

The two men work in silence together—or Evans works while Daniel watches, and Daniel burns, embarrassed of himself. Evans never says aught about all the ways in which Daniel has declined over the years, though surely he knows something of them, living in such close proximity to Daniel as he does. On the occasions when he meets Daniel's eyes, he offers a stout nod and nothing more, and Daniel welcomes his discretion.

There's no doubt Evans heard it the other day when Brittany came by her sore ear. There's no doubt Evans knows that someday soon, he and Daniel need to share some words about his boy and Daniel's girl and the inevitable match between them. On both accounts, Evans waits, knowing in the one case that Daniel will never speak of it and in the other that Daniel still needs time, that Daniel ain't ready to tread that road yet.

Sam and Brittany are almost laughably old to still be in their family tents, and a union between them might fix so many little things, if not heal fractures, and yet Daniel can't bring himself to change anything, to make the arrangements.

Who knows if it won't be so very long before the responsibility belongs solely to Evans anyhow?

When Daniel's tent lies disassembled on the ground, a heap of canvas spilled like milk here, a pile of timbers picked like bones there, Daniel and Brittany's belongings all in a small, unceremonious heap, Daniel and Evans tip their hats to each other.

Daniel says, Neighbor.

Neighbor, Evans says in return.

Evans still has his own tent to dismantle, but both he and Daniel know that Daniel won't help him with the task and so don't speak of it. It ain't long before Sam comes around anyway, ready to step in and do work where Daniel can't.

With nothing else waiting for him on the tent row and the circus camp crumbling to its knees all around him, Daniel makes the slow and arduous walk to the wagon bay, shuffling his feet along, chasing his blind-spot on its trail through Iowan grass. He rides to the depot atop a celerity wagon with Hummel, the circus master of coach, and the Hummel boy, a juggler. By now, his hands have begun to liven and work. He picks at them, fretful, rubbing over calluses, thumbing fissured skin.

Daniel don't expect to see Brittany at the depot—not with the countryside still under cover of dark, not when Brittany is off somewhere with the little mulatta.

He dizzies climbing down from the wagon and wobbles, and the Hummel boy notices.

Mr. Pierce, are you all right? he peeps, reaching out to take Daniel by the elbow.

Daniel nods, gripping the brake lever on the wagon for balance. The Hummel boy don't seem to believe him but is too polite to say so. He gapes at Daniel, anxious, and holds Daniel tight at the arm until Daniel must look away, unable to abide his well-meaning concern. Daniel breathes through his mouth, tasting train dust come up off the tracks. His blind-spot bores a blurry hole in the side panel of a boxcar, then blots out one of the electric lights beside the line, then censors the crowds of circus folks milling upon the earth.

When the clear part of his vision happens upon Brittany stumbling out of the back of a Studebaker wagon, Daniel perks up at once.

Brittany has the little mulatta girl with her, and they're laughing.

Daniel steps away from the Hummel boy, extricating his arm, and doesn't reply when the boy addresses him, Sir? Daniel has on occasion seen Brittany and the little mulatta girl together before, but never has he had opportunity to observe them enact such a scene as this one.

The girls join hands and tiptoe lightly on the dirt. They turn clockwork circles around each other, graceful, and the little mulatta pulls Brittany in close to her, stopping only when Brittany's brow touches hers, resting there, their noses, mouths, and chins less than one inch apart. The little mulatta says something brief, and Brittany says something brief back. They lock eyes, watching each other, blocking out everything around them.

Some deep-down part of Daniel winches like a turned screw, and, for the second time in as many days, Daniel knows he don't understand what it is that he's just seen. The girls exchange more words in brief, smiling, and Daniel fixates on Brittany's face, on the careful attention she pays to the little mulatta. The turned screw winches tighter in Daniel until he must glance away, embarrassed not of Brittany but of something in himself, of something unnamable and close to where his guilt resides.

When next he looks back to find Brittany and the little mulatta, they're gone, bled into the crowd.

* * *

Daniel spends the train ride to Storm Lake with his head hung between his knees. Once the sun rises, the temperature swelters, heating every board and scrap of iron in the boxcars. Daniel's boots have holes in the soles, and his chest has its invisible screw. The screw tightens every time Daniel thinks about telling Brittany that she must not keep company with the little mulatta girl anymore. It bothers Daniel when he breathes.

Briefly, Daniel considers having words with Puckerman, telling him that he ought to mind his wife better and keep her away from Brittany—keep her with her own kind. If Puckerman were to lay the law, then Brittany couldn't blame Daniel for it, could she? Daniel wouldn't have to extinguish that brightness in her eyes himself. Daniel wouldn't break anything else in her by his own hands, only someone else's, and wouldn't that somehow be more bearable?

Trouble is that Puckerman ain't likely to mind his wife, even on Daniel's recommendation.

Trouble is that even if Brittany were to blame Puckerman or the little mulatta for everything, Daniel would still know the truth about what he had done.

Daniel goes directly from the depot in Storm Lake to the circus camp, foregoing the parade through town per his usual. Upon arriving at the camp, he heads straightaway to his tent to lie down, heat be damned. He breathes heavily and thrashes on his cot, unable to make himself comfortable. No matter how he lies, he feels a stitch in his breast. He can't drive the image of Brittany and the little mulatta standing brow-to-brow at the depot from his mind.

* * *

Sleep never comes to Daniel, though he struggles after it for the better part of an hour. Sweating and bleary, he rises from his cot, wipes the wet of his beard along his sleeve. His brain brews an awful headache, and he don't want to wait for it to overtake him. With quaking hands, he apprehends the bottle from his toilette set, uncorking the stopper. With quaking lips, he drinks a quick shot of elixir, swallowing the sting of sour metal.

The calm hasn't yet come to him when a shadow shades his tent flaps.

Pierce! Tanaka calls, standing just outside the door. Pierce! I know you're in there! Mr. Adams wants to see you right away. He has business.

Tanaka's shadow retreats, and Daniel sighs from the bottom of his lungs. He don't know what Adams might want of him, but he hopes that whatever it is will provide some distraction from his present state. He shakes his head, waits, breathes, takes another lick of the elixir. For a long time, his heart beats, uncountable, until finally the screw loosens in his chest, the tension lessens in his brain, and the pain recedes, quieted for the moment.

* * *

Adams is in a fine mood, and he invites Daniel inside the business tent right away. He smokes cigars with the gilly Fabray, his face reddened either from the open bottle of brandy on his table or from the temperature inside the tent, which is stifling. His boy ain't nowhere around, and neither are Fabray's wife or girl. It ain't yet ten o'clock in the day. Adams claps Daniel on the back in greeting.

Come on inside, man! Come on inside! Have you met my colleague, Mr. Russell Fabray of the Allen & Pike Railroad Company? Mr. Daniel Pierce, Mr. Russell Fabray. Mr. Russell Fabray, Mr. Daniel Pierce, my knife thrower—a longtime employee, been with this circus longer than I have. Born here, weren't you?

Daniel nods, Yes, sir.

Some gillies who join the circus stop being gillies the second they sign to the lists, but other gillies who join the circus never cease to be gillies, no matter how long they stay on or travel and perform with the company. Adams has owned this circus for over twenty years, but Daniel still ain't sure what kind of gilly who joined the circus he is.

Adams nods to the table at the center of the tent, to an open cigar box beside the brandy.

Have a smoke, man? We're celebrating.

Celebrating, sir? Daniel says, uncomfortable with both Adams and Fabray casting their eyes on him at once.

Adams nods, That's why I've called you here, you see. We haven't made an official announcement yet, but we plan to do so later today.

An announcement, sir? Daniel says.

Adams nods, Yes. My Arthur—why, he proposed to Mr. Fabray's very own Miss Lucy, and Miss Lucy kindly accepted his proposal! Marvelous news, hm?

Of course, sir.

Yes, yes, of course it is, Adams beams, giving Daniel another firm clap on the back. And that's where you come in, my man—I need someone to go into town and procure some spirits I've ordered to honor the occasion. They're waiting at the general store under my name. I figured you were the fellow for the job, as I can trust you to keep the secret until the time is right. I've already had Mr. Hummel arrange a wagon for you. Won't you say you'll go? You feel up to it?

Of course, sir.

See? Good man, good man!

For a second, Adams beams, enraptured with a giddy and fool kind of joy. He looks nothing like the man who once sobbed in Daniel's lap, having lost a wife and nearly lost a son. He looks nothing like the man who once held a sobbing Daniel, Daniel having lost a wife and daughter and already started on the path to losing other things.

Briefly, Daniel envies him, envies Adams for pulling himself up and pulling up his son.

Daniel had always hoped that Brittany would have a better life than his own, but now she has had the same life as he or worse, and no one will smoke to celebrate her, even if she marries the Evans boy or shows some accomplishment or distinction at the circus.

Thank you, sir, Daniel says, tipping his hat and going away without taking the proffered cigar.

* * *

When Daniel rescues Brittany and the little mulatta from Mrs. Schuester, Brittany inquires as to whether or not the little mulatta might accompany her and Daniel into town, and Daniel has a good mind to say no.

The words foment in his throat, almost reaching his tongue—but then he catches sight of Brittany's ear, still ruddy and not altogether healed, and the screw inside him winches again, strong, as if he had never drunk any elixir at all.

Oh, he slurs. I suppose, if she likes.

Daniel knows he ought not to coddle Brittany out of guilt, but he does, and Brittany lights like sun catching the sea and laughs, taking the little mulatta by the hand. She runs like her mama in more ways than one, and Daniel knows he's just made another mistake.

Brittany has always had it in her to rove, but until this week, she had never had anything to rove after.

Wanderlust is in her bones, bled down from highlands and hills she ain't never seen and a mama she more resembles with every passing day. She's still much younger than Susannah was when Daniel and the circus last stopped in Louisville, but she's old enough to make fool choices of her own account—and Daniel hates to suppose that she will someday do so.

Growing up at the circus has shrouded Brittany to certain truths. She don't understand the way the world works beyond tent rows and show days. She don't understand that sometimes keeping the wrong company is worse than keeping no company at all.

Daniel breathes in sharp air between his teeth, rubs the ache around the orbits of his eyes.

Brittany and the little mulatta duck down the nearest alley, their shadows spilling after them, upright, upon canvas walls; hair swallowing the light, gold to white and black to blue; voices bounding in giddy echo, overlapping, bright. They grasp at each other and almost fall down, wrists and hands braided in a knot.

* * *

The little mulatta reappears before Brittany does, emerging from the tent rows onto the wagon bay. She's quiet in the way that gillies tend to be, raised to believe that self-containment is a great and moral virtue and that four solid walls epitomize security and open space danger.

Brittany ain't back yet? Daniel hails her, surprised to see her by her lonesome.

She steps into Daniel's blind-spot, but Daniel still perceives it when she starts, surprised that he would speak to her, he reckons. She is just a little slip of a girl, not naturally so very dark but made so by living out-of-doors at the circus. She must be very near to Brittany's age, though perhaps a bit younger. It would surprise Daniel to think that she is a surgeon's daughter, except that Daniel well knows that every man has his secrets—and maybe every girl, too.

The girl can't seem to find her voice, but for once Daniel can find his.

She makes friends real easy, he says all of a sudden, wanting, somehow, for this little slip—this fire-breather's wife, this surgeon's daughter, this little mulatta—to understand the situation.

Perhaps if he were more eloquent, Daniel could clarify, explaining what he means about Brittany hanging her heart on things without first considering the result of her quickness to do so. As it is, Daniel can only hope that the little mulatta already has some wisdom such as her people so often do concerning the harshness of the world.

She must know, as Daniel does, that her friendship with Brittany will come at a cost and that she must be the one who is sensible about it—the one who disentangles herself, makes the break, does the hard thing. She must know that she must be the one to take Brittany's heart down from its high hook rather than to allow it to either fall or strangle first.

Brittany isn't foolish, but she'll never do that unhanging herself.

Daniel searches the little mulatta, tilting his head to rescue her from his blind-spot. He waits for the girl to work up to something, some reply, however cursory or trite. Daniel had never stood so close to the girl before, never examined her so closely until now. Her eyes are dark secrets to him, the breath in her throat a mystery. They bill her as a gypsy on the midway, but he knows she isn't that, not truly. She's something else entirely, and Daniel wonders if Brittany even knows what that something is at all.

Nearly a full minute passes before the little mulatta speaks.

She's my best friend, she says, fervent, earnest in a way that don't come natural to folks who have grown up at the circus.

And it's strange how _best_ sounds so much like _only true _coming from her lips, and how _She's my best friend _comes across as _Without her, I would be lonely, too_.

For her word, Daniel knows that the little mulatta—that Santana—knows how surely Brittany has taken to her. He also knows that she ain't the person to unhang any heart from a hook, that she has waited, like Brittany has, and maybe even waded through a life of deprivations herself. For as much as Brittany has roved to find her, she has roved to find Brittany.

Before Daniel can say more of it, Brittany appears from the end of a tent row, smiling her new, easy smile. It occurs to Daniel then that the difficulty is not to live for his child but to allow her to live as she will—to enjoy living, to breathe.

_**Fin.**_


End file.
